


Feel Again

by drosophilase



Category: Last Friday Night (Music Video), Struck by Lightning (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-12 23:37:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 44,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drosophilase/pseuds/drosophilase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson Phillips's senior year is going just fine-- until someone he's known all his life (or so he thought) sweeps in and changes everything and he finds out being independent doesn't have to mean being alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Carson slips into the empty classroom for the newspaper staff five minutes after the final bell, setting up at the front desk for Writing Club.

Though it’s nearly two months into the semester, Carson is still optimistic about the club, especially since the vandalism of the flyers has toned down from them disappearing altogether to just a penis or two appearing in the margins.  Every Wednesday Carson sits in the journalism classroom and works on articles for the _Chronicle_  and ones that will print under his name in the  _Time_  and  _Tribune_  one day.  Though the door stays open, no one ever walks through it.

It’s the week before Fall Break and the always-grating student body has kicked up a notch on the insufferable scale, with even more screaming and running in the hallways.  It’s gotten so bad Carson can barely hear himself screaming  _cattle_ through the corridors.  His flyers have started disappearing again, too, and every crumpled yellow sheet he spots in trash cans fuels his anger all over again.

Even though it’s after 3:30, the hallways are still noisy, and every time Carson finally settles into his work, a loud  _whoop_  pulls his concentration.  In desperation, he shuts the door until it’s just cracked in invitation, neatly hand-lettering a sheet that says the club is still in session and taping it to the door.

He’s finally, finally in the groove of his expose on Clovis High’s school-wide excessive Expo marker usage when a loud shuffle-scrape distracts him, again.  Wailing out loud before he can stop himself, Carson stands up, intent on chasing the idiots away.

There on the floor are the rest of his flyers, crumpled and dirty and, judging by the footprints, stomped on.

_You have got to be shitting me._

Carson is _livid_ , scooping up the papers and dumping them in the classroom trashcan, ignoring the insults that stand out in red Sharpie against the yellow and the black ink.

He pulls his master copy of the flyer out of his notebook and storms down to the teacher’s lounge, not even bothering to check if it’s empty before he flings the door open.  Not even god himself could keep Carson from making 500 copies on every piece of paper he can find— the rest of the yellow sheaf, green from the Recycling Club, and red shoved in the back of the supply closet that reminds him fondly of his blinding rage.

Intent on plastering every surface with flyers, Carson stomps back down the hall, kicking lockers as he goes.  “ _Fuck,”_  he cries when he hits a metal corner wrong, a sort of sick satisfaction welling up from the throbbing in his toe and the word bouncing off the hallway, calming him just a little.

He limps back to the journalism classroom to grab his tape and nearly drops all 500 flyers when he sees the front-center desk is occupied.

Carson splutters, trying to cover his fumble and form a coherent sentence.  It shouldn’t be this hard— he’s a  _writer_ , for christ’s sake.  “What are  _you_  doing here?” he manages to sneer, slamming the stack of flyers onto his desk. 

Aaron doesn’t flinch, that smug smile of his always, always stuck on his face.  Carson wants to slap it off.  “This is the Writing Club, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Carson says through clenched teeth, focusing on digging the scotch tape out of the desk drawer and not on  _strangling him_ , “as in, a quiet space for writers to write.  Not for you to get your antagonistic rocks off.”

Aaron Christopherson is the very definition of  _popular asshole_ , just one member of the group of subjectively cool kids that holds an iron-fisted reign of terror over Clover High.  The same group that makes life a bitch for Carson daily and in which Aaron plays an active role.  

Carson’s a little confused and a lot pissed.  Aaron hasn’t given him more acknowledgement than derisive laughter since they were in elementary school.

He finally senses the animosity in the room—  _about fucking time_ — and drops the smirk, holding up his empty hands.  “Hey, Carson, I’m not here to mess with you.”

“Then why  _are_  you here?” Carson interrupts before he can say anything else, crossing his arms tightly and leveling Aaron with a glare hot enough to set his stupid spiked hair on fire.

He has the good grace to flinch.  “Alright, I deserve that,” Aaron admits, looking down at his high-tops swinging below the desk.  Carson waits, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to be forthcoming with any kind of reason behind this ridiculously strange behavior.

“Let me help you hang flyers,” Aaron says finally, hopping off the desk.

“What?” Carson questions flatly, reaching out to sweep the flyers out of Aaron’s reach.

“C’mon, Carson, let me help you.  It’ll take you all night to put them up without me.”

Carson eyes him for a long moment, and, to his credit, Aaron looks steadily back, not a hint of smirk on his lips.  There’s just no reason  _why_  he would be doing this.  Unless he’s spying, Carson’s brain supplies.  Or planning a bigger prank than just pulling down flyers.

“I’m here of my own free will and choosing,” he says softly, holding his empty hands out this time, palms up.  Carson looks down quickly, then back to his face.  There’s something there he hasn’t seen in a long time.  Maybe… earnestness?  He doesn’t move, just looking, calculating, waiting on Aaron.

Finally he huffs out a sigh, ruining the moment and now the cockiness is back.  “Just let me help you hang the damn flyers, Carson.  Jesus.”

He doesn’t know why he does it.  Maybe it’s because Aaron’s right, and he’ll never get them up alone.  Maybe it’s because of that flicker of something almost human. Maybe it’s because those pants are tight enough that the urge to see his ass in them is ridiculously strong.

Whatever the reason, he lets him.

Digging out another roll of scotch tape, Carson divides the stack in half and shoves them across the table.  Aaron takes them happily, and that fucking smug satisfaction irritates Carson like  _no other_  and he knows he can’t keep his mouth shut.

“Don’t you dare think this means we’re friends or some shit like that, Christopherson,” Carson growls as Aaron turns to leave the classroom.  And oh _damn_ , he was totally right about the pants.

Aaron barks out a laugh, back to his cool condescending self and then some.  “Please, don’t flatter yourself, Phillips.”

Carson’s retort dies on his tongue as Aaron struts out of the classroom, humming the latest obnoxious Top 40 hit and with  _way_ more sway in his hips that what’s strictly necessary.


	2. Chapter 2

Deciding to divide and conquer, they start on opposite ends of the English/History hallway and work their way in.

“Don’t tape on the paint, the janitors will flay me alive,” Carson instructs, letting his voice carry down the hall without turning his head.  Aaron doesn’t say anything, but the rhythmic rustle of flyers, the grating pull and  _snick_  of the tape lets Carson know he’s still there.

“Always put at least three side by side, that’s how people notice them.”  Pull, _snick_.

“And don’t mix the colors when you do, if you can possibly avoid it, because that’s just an eyesore.”  Papers shuffling.  The soft squeak of Keds sneakers.  More paper shuffling.

Carson stretches up to tape over the faces of the models on the old poster announcing school pictures that they took back in September.  God, this entire school is a mess.  “At the very least don’t put just red and green together,” he adds as an afterthought.

“You really never shut up, do you Phillips?” Aaron finally speaks up, his voice tight with barely-withheld exasperation.

“Not especially,” Carson shoots back cheerily, climbing on a desk left in the hallway to get above the lockers.

A sort of under-his-breath grumble is Aaron’s only response.  And a lot of agitated rustling.  Pull,  _snick_.  Pull  _snick_  pull  _SNICK_.

“What was that?” Carson asks, unable to stop himself.  He really shouldn’t be baiting Aaron when he’s genuinely helping, but it’s just so goddamn  _suspicious_.  If there’s an ulterior motive behind his actions, Carson is more than capable of annoying the shit out of him until he gives up the act.

 “Nothing,” Aaron chirps, and it’s the exact same way he says it when he and his idiotic friends laugh at stupid things on their phones in the middle of class and the teacher asks what’s going on.

Yeah, right.  _Nothing_.  Okay.

Carson doesn’t glorify it with a response.  He stretches up on his tiptoes to get at the last little blank space in the corner of the huge student activities bulletin board.

“You know what would be really kick ass?”  And oh god Aaron’s right in his  _ear_.

“Jesus  _christ_ , do you really have to sneak up on me?” Carson yelps, scowling to cover for the fact that he definitely flinched in surprise.

Aaron’s not the least bit apologetic, waving his indignation away.   _Typical._   “Shut up.  Anyways.  Let’s cover the entire bulletin board.”

Carson looks back at the board, considering.  As usual the flyers are layered at least four thick by now, peeled back in some places to reveal announcements from August.  More recently there’s the football schedule and the days for fall and winter break, mingled in with club sign ups and cafeteria menus.

Barely visible in the fray, there’s a flash of yellow from his own last round of flyers buried up in the middle-ish left side, with another familiar strip just barely hanging to a staple near the center. The tempered anger in his gut flares up hot again. 

Why does his club get treated like it’s even more sub-standard than the Chess Club or the fucking Astronomy Club?  Their stupid huge dark-blue-with-silver-foil-stars  _poster_  is perfectly whole and unblemished, has been since the first week, but every time Carson tries to put one Writing Club paper up on the board it gets ripped down before the day is over.   _Enough._

“You know what?” Carson seethes, and he knows it’s the hard edge to his voice that makes Aaron take a step back.  To be honest, he scares himself a little too.  “Let’s do it.”

Aaron  _whoops,_  jumping a little and raising his hand awkwardly, like he wanted to give Carson a high five but thought better of it.  At least he’s a quick learner.

“Alright  _sweet._   This is totally bad ass, Phillips.”

“Yeah, totally,” Carson replies absently, already picturing the look on Claire Matthew’s face when she sees he’s buried her Clover High Cheerleader of the Year announcement under a hundred Writing Club flyers.

Digging two staplers out from the journalism desk, they get to work.  It’s particularly satisfying for Carson to stab sharp metal into the names and faces he loathes so much, even if it’s just a staple.  And  _god_ , it feels so good to do something in retaliation for once, even if it’s something incredibly passive-aggressive and probably hazardous to his general wellness. 

He doesn’t realize that he’s  _really_  gotten into it, like making scary cave man grunts while frantically slamming the stapler into the board with an open palm, until Aaron clears his throat.

Carson rounds on him and Aaron throws his palms up, making this little shriek of alarm in the back of his throat that’s entirely… un-Aaron like.  (Well, okay, maybe he  _was_  brandishing the stapler a little bit threateningly.)

“Uh, can you put the weapon down?” he squeaks out, eyeing the stapler apprehensively.

Carson doesn’t even try to stop his massive eyeroll.  “Calm your tits, Christopherson,” he spits out, dropping his hands even still.  “It’s not a staple _gun_.  As long as you stay out of point-blank range I think you’re good.”

Silence.  Aaron’s got a retort for anything Carson can throw at him, usually, and now he’s just staring, stupid eyebrows raised up into his stupid fucking spiked hair and his mouth all rounded and open and just…  _staring._

 _“What?”_ Carson finally yells, ignoring the warm prickling all along his skin because of all the times Aaron Christopherson has looked at him, not one time was it like  _that_.

“You’re really angry, aren’t you?” Aaron says, and it’s all breathy and reverent like he just discovered the Holy Grail or something.  “Like, you’re just absolutely full of rage.”

The warm fuzzies are all gone, then, because judgy assholes who think they have everything figured out are not worth five seconds of Carson’s time.  Even if the asshole in question does have the ability to melt his insides a little with his stupid, stupid face.

Carson can’t handle this right now.  Who the fuck  _is_  he to think he can just barge into a perfectly quiet afternoon in Writing Club, offer to help, and then throw around accusations like he knows more about Carson than just his last name?  Hell no.

“What are you here for, Aaron?” Carson snarls, laying on the venom thick, willing to do anything to get Aaron away from psychoanalyzing him.  “Because last time I checked, you and all your little friends like to make anonymous hate pages on Facebook about losers like me.  What is your angle here?”

It works.

Aaron looks cornered, glancing around the deserted hallways with scared eyes like he’s about to be forced to divulge a huge secret.

“Carson, I need your help.”

_Well then._


	3. Chapter 3

“Do tell,” Carson smirks, the rapid pulse in his ears covered by an icy calm exterior. 

Waiting impatiently for Aaron to ‘fess up, stomach twisting in bewildered anticipation, his mind races with a dozen scenarios in which someone like  _Aaron_ could possibly need  _his_  help, and each is more ridiculous than the last: paper he needs written, teens-with-actual-potential convention he needs tips to fake his way into, riddle he must solve to unstrap a bomb from his chest. 

Well, hopefully it’s not the last one.  Though that  _would_  be exciting.

Aaron sighs, runs his fingers through his hair again and wow, does it just defy all laws of physics and gravity straight from the follicle, or…?  He looks like he’s taking one last moment to reconsider all the options he exhausted before asking Carson for help— a good idea, considering whatever he says will probably give Carson enough material to blackmail him for the rest of his life.

Whatever it is, he makes a decision, resignation clear in the set of his mouth and slumped shoulders.  “Did you hear about the girls’ bathroom on the science wing?”

 

And wow, okay, that’s the  _last_  thing Carson expected to hear.  He backtracks, trying to find his way down from  _in trouble with the mafia_  to  _harmless school prank_. 

“You mean  _you’re_  the one who vandalized that bathroom?” he asks, scowling at Aaron in disbelief.  “You’re the one who wrote in lipstick on the walls and stuck maxi pads to the stall doors?  …In the  _girls’ bathroom?_ ”

Aaron rolls his eyes impatiently, and  _ah_ , there’s the Aaron he knows and loathes.  “No.  Well, yes.  As far as Principal Gifford knows and as it says on my permanent record, yes.  But did I technically  _physically_  do it… no.”

“You’re covering for Rebekah Sykes, aren’t you,” Carson deadpans, a statement rather than a question.

Aaron winces.  “She kind of has dirt on me.  And if she got suspended one more time they were going to expel her.”

“So you convinced Principal Gifford that you got a tube of Hooker Red #5 and a box of Everyday Maxis and graffitied the bathroom with—what was it?—  _You bitches can lick my clit?_ ”

“Seriously?  You, of all people, should know how absolutely idiotic everyone at this school is.”

“Well then, Christopherson, there’s one thing we do have in common.  And I thought this day would never come.  But my real question is, how do  _I_  fit into all this?”

“Convincing Gifford wasn’t easy, and I still think he suspects I’m taking the heat for someone—”

“— _Suspects_ —” he scoffs, interrupting.

“— _so,_  instead of suspending me,”Aaron continues, raising his voice to cut Carson off, “he’s making me join an after-school extracurricular activity to, and I quote,  _‘have an outlet’_  for my  _‘creative energy.’_   I’m guessing he saw some potential in that artful arrangement of feminine products.”

Carson can’t be swayed by humor, though the air-quoting and spot-on mocking of Principal Giffords was strangely endearing.  Mutual hate and all that.

“And so you chose the Writers’ Club?   _My_  Writers’ Club?”

“Well, um, yearbook wouldn’t even let me come in the door, SGA elections are long over, Sculpting Club is past their clay quota for the semester, all the coaches laughed at me when I asked for a tryout, I can’t even trace to save my life so Art Club is out, and everyone in Chess Club and Astronomy Club squealed and threw  _themselves_  into trash cans if I so much as looked at them.  So.  You’re kind of my only hope.”

“Well, well,  _well._   Isn’t this a predicament.”  Now Carson’s mind was sifting through a very  _different_  list of possibilities, not many of which were innocent.  He did have a lot of newspapers to print and fold every week, a car he needed washed, and more than one pile of dirty laundry laying around…

“Carson, come on.”  And wow, if he didn’t know any better he’d swear that Aaron Christopherson was  _begging_.  “I’d rather not get suspended.  If I miss Underhill’s essay-style, only-ten-questions  _Brit Lit Midterm of Death_  and have to take a zero, I’m toast.  You gotta help me out.”

Huh.  He really does sound sincere.  And, if Carson was being honest with himself, it’s actually extremely refreshing to hear someone concerned about their studies, and not just  _who_  is doing  _what_  with  _whom_  this week.  And really, there’s no reason to say  _no_ …

“Maybe we can work out a deal,” Carson relents slowly, not wanting to put all his chips on the table at once.  “You can join the Writers’ Club—”

“— _Yes,_  oh my god  _thank you_ , I—”

 “— _if_  you do a few things for me.”

Aaron falls silent mid-fist pump and eyes him suspiciously, considering. “I guess that’s fair.  Don’t you screw me over, Phillips.”

“First of all, you have to join the  _Chronicle_  staff too.”

And oh god Aaron looks  _scandalized_ , that little shit.  “What the fuck? I wasn’t actually gonna  _write!_  I just need to be in the club!”

“Well, scratch that then.  First of all,  _you actually have to write_.   _Second_  of all, you have to join the  _Chronicle_  staff.  Do you have third period free?”

“Uh, I TA for Mrs. Matthews, but I mean…”

“Excellent, you can get out of that.”

“But that’s when I sleep, man!”

Carson ignores him.  “ _Third_  of all, none of this gets out to the student body at large.  Not this deal, and definitely not sordid details of, like, how chummy we are behind closed doors, or how hot you think I am.  Nothing.”

“Seriously, ‘chummy’?  That’s really rich, Phillips, seeing as you can’t stop talking down to me for five seconds.”

Carson continues, pretending he can’t hear him.  “You can explain to your, _ahem_ , friends, that writing for the  _Chronicle_  is your punishment, then bitch and moan about me behind my back as much as you want.  And we’ll make this work for however long you have to do it to appease Principal Gifford, and then that’s the end of things.  No skin off your nose or mine.”

“Alright, you have a deal.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“…Yeah?”

“Fuck, if I’d known you’d agree this easily I would have asked for more.  Gotten you to be my slave for the day or something.”

“Oh shut up, Phillips, and shake my goddamn hand.”

He stretches his own hand forward and a horrible thought crosses his mind just before their skin touches.  Carson pulls it back likes he’s been burned.

“And if this whole thing is just some kind of  _sick joke_ ,” and god he tries so hard to keep his tone stern and authoritative, but that wobbly edge of hurt and doubt is sneaking in, bleeding into his voice and making it squeak around the edges, “if this is just some way for you to get dirt on me to tell all your little friends about and make my life even  _more_  miserable, Aaron I swear to fucking  _god_ —”

“Hey!  Hey.  Calm  _down_  Carson.”  And he’s almost nice, almost…  _soothing_ , and the shock of that is enough to calm Carson’s rising hysteria.  “It’s not like that.  I wouldn’t do that.  I know you think I’m a total asshole, and maybe I am, but I’m telling you the truth.  Scout’s honor.”

Carson glares at him.  “You were never in the scouts.”

Aaron smiles, a genuine one, and wow he really has a nice smile when it’s not half-caught up in a smirk.  “Okay, so I wasn’t.  Um, pinky promise?” 

He extends his hand towards Carson again, this time curled up with only his littlest finger sticking out.

Flicking his eyes back and forth from that proffered pinky to Aaron’s big hazel eyes and back, Carson weighs his options.  He really does need someone competent and willing to help him straighten out the  _Chronicle_ , and having company after school definitely isn’t a bad thing.  And Aaron  _does_  seem honest, that faint glimmer of something warm and human in his eyes again. 

For whatever reason, stupidity or trust or recklessness, Carson links his right pinky finger with Aaron’s.

“Deal.”


	4. Chapter 4

With a relatively empty Thursday and Friday before Fall Break, Carson has plenty of time to rethink his deal with Aaron.  He only catches glimpses of him in the halls, just a tuft of dark hair or a whip of the tail of a jean jacket but by the time Carson can really look, he’s long gone, sucked into the black hole that is a high school hallway between periods.

They agreed that Aaron would join the  _Chronicle_  staff the Monday after break, so Carson could warn the staff of the situation on Friday. 

After yelling about the week’s edition not being finished— _again_ —Carson flops down into his chair, already typing up the list of articles he’ll have to write himself over the long break.

At a minute until the end of the period, Carson takes his glasses off and stands up.

“On Monday, Aaron Christopherson will be joining the staff, writing our Student Spotlight section.”

The bell rings, drowning out most of their indignant cries.  Well, Vicki’s is more of a wordless wail.

Carson holds up a hand.  “He’s joining the staff and that’s final.  Anyone with a formal complaint can send it, in writing, to my email.  Aaron has agreed to play nice, and we’re all stuck with him.  Deal with it.”

He sits back down to stare resolutely at the blinking cursor on the screen as they file past his desk and out the door, ignoring the glares and Vicki’s middle finger, wondering again if he was making the right decision.  He didn’t  _have_  to help Aaron, and judging by the way it seemed torturous for him to have to ask, Aaron wasn’t too crazy about the situation either.  If there was only another way out…

 

A throat clears, loud in the empty room, and makes Carson look up.  “What’s up, Malerie?”

Her ever-present video camera is pointed right at his face, but he’s long been used to the unforgiving red light.

“We’re talking about  _the_  Aaron Christopherson, right?  The dreamy, but awfully rude loner with the hair that seems to defy gravity?”

Carson sighs, shutting his laptop to pack it away.  “If his head was cast in any musical, it’d be  _Wicked_.  Yes, that’s him.”

“Oh, okay,” she agrees easily, following him to the door. 

Something about what she said makes him stop, his shoulder bag narrowly missing her when he turns.  “What do you mean, ‘loner’?”

Malerie recoils, shielding her camera with one hand.  “What do  _you_  mean?”

Carson huffs, trying to stay patient.  “You just said Aaron’s a loner.  I thought he was friends with Patrick Campbell and the rest of that group.  They’re always talking in class—very  _loudly_  talking in class— about inside jokes and hanging out, drinking their parents’ alcohol.”

It sounds more like a question than a statement even coming out of his own mouth, and Carson frantically tries to think.  He’s always seen Aaron with Patrick and his best friend Gray, and their closest female friends Patty Maxham and Sara Strickland, in the hallways and the parking lot and chatting in class and— Oh god, he can’t actually think of a single time he’s seen Aaron with them outside of school.

“Maybe Patrick and the rest of them all talk about that, but Aaron doesn’t,” she shrugs.  “He’s never even with them at lunch.  Actually, usually he’s not _anywhere_  at lunch.  You notice a lot of things when you record them all.”

Carson gapes after her as she pushes past him and out into the hallway to fight the throngs of people racing to lunch.  He slumps a little against the wall, trying to reconcile this into his  _apparently_  seriously gapped mental picture of Aaron.

A quiet boy, overly cocky when provoked, Carson’s classmate since preschool who has a penchant for 1980s fashion statements and apparently eats lunch alone, allows himself to be associated with an unbearably obnoxious group, but also takes possible suspension for trumpet section leader for the  _Pride of Clover Marching Band_ Rebekah Sykes? 

It didn’t make a bit of sense, but then it all had to be true. 

—

For the rest of the day he can’t stop thinking about it.  Why would Aaron eat lunch alone?  If he preferred to be alone, why would he want to be associated with a crowd that made Carson want to physically vomit?

He had to find out for himself.

Carson purposefully sits in the back of sixth period AP Government and Economics, the one class he had with Aaron and his entire friend group.  Or, not-friend group.

He makes sure to sit in a chair that gives him the perfect angle to see any movement of Aaron’s lips, and he waits.

It doesn’t take long for Patty and Sara to start talking.  As soon as Mrs. Braxton gives them busy work, a study guide for their midterm after the long break, that whole side of the room starts chatting, books closed on their desks.  Carson opens his book and study guide and keeps his head down, listening hard.

“Thank  _god_  this hellacious week is almost over.”  That had to be Sara, because that’s not even a word.

“God, amen.”  And then there’s Patty. 

Carson has always found it really funny how they consistently call on god every five seconds when he surely wouldn’t spit at them if they were on fire.  Well, if he exists.

“So, Gray, your house this weekend?  Have your parents brought back more stuff?” Patty asks enthusiastically.  Carson glances up in time to see her lean across the aisle, not caring who heard, least of all Mrs. Braxton.  He rolls his eyes before focusing back on his work.  These people are truly pathetic.

“Uh, yeah, totally.” Gray Duke, as evidenced by the thick, slow drawl.  He transferred from Alabama in freshman year.  Carson shivers at the mere thought of Alabama.   _Euck_.  Clover’s bad, even horrible sometimes, but there’s no way it comes close to bigoted, racist, so-closed-minded-the-door’s-bolted-shut Alabama.

“Cool,” Patty agrees, and a quick glance confirms that she is, in fact, flirting so hard with Gray she’s about to fall out of her desk.  Carson shakes his head reflexively— god, the  _stupidity_  in this room— when Aaron catches his eye.  He’s shaking his head too, just a little, and while he’s staring down at his (already completed, judging by the neat pencil marks covering the page) study guide, but it’s there.

And he hasn’t said a word the entire time.

Carson watches and listens for the 35 minutes left in class, rotating between disgusted and infuriated with every vapid word that goes back and forth between Patty, Sara, Gray, and Patrick (who had to finish his work first before he could chime in— he’ll be Valedictorian and Chief Douchebag all at the same time), and not once does Aaron open his mouth.  He laughs a couple times when they specifically look at him or Sara jabs him with her pointy elbow, but mostly he just re-reads his completed study guide, over and over.

Finally, the bell rings, and Carson gathers his books up slowly, pretending to look for something in his bag.  It’s really hard to hear over the scuffle of everyone trying to get to seventh period, but Sara’s nasally voice is hard to miss.

“You  _sure_  you can’t come hang out tonight, Aaron?”  God, she’s practically whining.  Carson fully expects her to throw herself in Aaron’s lap next.

“You guys know I hang out with Toby on Friday nights,” he says, exhaustion clear in his voice.  It’s the first time he’s talked all period.

There’s a pause, and Carson looks up slyly just in time to see the end of the Significant Look Sara and Patty exchange.

“Aaron, there’s a home game tonight.  We’ve seen Toby there the last four games to cheer on Rebekah.  Nights when you said you were hanging out with him?”

Panic.  Sheer panic on Aaron’s face.  Carson forgets that he’s supposed to be discreet, unable to look away from that wide-eyed, open-mouthed  _terror_.  All he can think about are those Discovery Channel specials he watched, the ones that entirely focus on the pack of lions picking off the slowest, sick wildebeest and ripping it to shreds.

“I have to go,” Aaron blurts out, already moving down the aisle, away from where Patty and Sara had tried to block him in.  “I’ll talk to you later.”

He doesn’t spare Carson so much as a glance as he sweeps by him for the door.  Carson blinks dumbly after him, trying to process.   _Great_.  Now he has a million more questions about Aaron, and still no answers in sight.

“Did you want something, freak?”

Carson turns, already mid-eye roll.  Patty’s trying to level him with her signature snob face, curled lip and wrinkled nose.

“Oh,  _freak,_  how original of you.  Go take a long walk off a short pier, Fatty Max Ham.”

Well, that one’s not original either, but it does make her gasp and shriek  _Carson!_ so it did the trick.  Unbothered by her reaction (it’s the nickname she’s had since elementary school, and doctors couldn’t find an ounce of fat on her body if they tried, it’s infuriating, really) Carson dashes into the hallway, looking left and right for some clue of where Aaron disappeared.

He’s long gone, of course, leaving Carson to wonder once again at just how much he  _thought_  he knew about Aaron.

—-

For Carson, breaks from school are frustrating at best, soul-sucking at worst.  There’s only so many hours he can spend holed up in his room before he gets driven absolutely insane.

His biggest trick is to stay up all night writing and sleep well into the day, so to have less hours to face his mom’s pathetic couch-ridden and strangely demanding drunkenness.  He slips out after lunch and spends the rest of the day with his grandmother until the visiting hours at Clover Meadows Assisted Living are over, tossing a drive-thru dinner at his mom’s passed-out form on the couch and locking himself in his room for the rest of the night.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

By the time he wakes up on Wednesday (2 pm, a new personal best) Sheryl has totally caught on to his plan.

“About time you got up,” she quips as he passes through the living room to the kitchen.

“Well, inspiration doesn’t really run on a schedule,” Carson snarks back, internally guilty over the fact that he had not, in fact, been writing until 4 am, but stalking Aaron Christopherson’s Facebook page and looking through old yearbooks for mentions of his name. 

This weird…  _fascination_  with Aaron he’s garnered lately is just because Carson hates not knowing things.  If he wonders what the land speed of an ostrich is, he Googles it.  If he can’t remember what chapter Snape kills Dumbledore in the Half-Blood Prince, he looks it up.  And if he can’t for the life of him figure out who the hell Aaron Christopherson is, well, he has to find out in the only ways he can.  It’s just research.

“Then you can tell  _inspiration_  I said to get a watch!” Sheryl jeers.  Carson blows out a frustrated breath as he pulls out eggs and a frying pan, trying to stay calm.  He should have remembered that by 2 pm she’s inebriated enough to be loose with her words but not enough to be passed out. 

Just five more days and he can escape back to another exquisite (and yet ultimately more bearable) circle of hell.  At least there he’s not the only one suffering.

Sheryl doesn’t let him slink back to his room to shower and take his laptop to Clover Meadows, oh no.  As soon as he’s rinsing off his plate and cup she says, “Be a dear and load the dishwasher, would you?”

When he’s done with the dishes, the carpets need vacuuming.  Then the front garden needs weeding.  And the back yard needs cutting, and Carson’s bathroom needs cleaning, and all these things cannot wait another second and must be done today.

Halfway through pushing the stupid old lawn mower that would really be better suited at the bottom of a trash heap around the backyard, Carson breaks.  Why _should_  he be doing all this?  If Sheryl would do a thing or two while she’s at home all day this wouldn’t even be an issue.

He turns off the mower, wiping sweat off his brow with the hem of his tee shirt as he stomps toward the house to give Sheryl a piece of his mind.

A wail makes him stop.  Through the sliding glass doors he can see her, screaming into the phone in that tone especially reserved for his father.  She hangs up and slumps to the floor, not even bothering to take the extra five steps to the couch.

Carson turns, walks back, viciously cranks up the fussy busted push mower, and mows on.

He gets cornered again on Thursday, forced to answer truthfully when Sheryl asks if he has anything going on that day.  He silently says an apology to Grandma, even if she doesn’t know the difference, and grumpily drags the bucket of water out to scrub the driveway.

It’s not until Friday when he wakes up at a normal time, having dropped into bed exhausted from cleaning out the gutters the day before, that he finally escapes.  On the way to visit his grandmother he picks up brunch from her favorite little deli.

“Have I ever told you about my grandson?” she says after a couple of hours, breaking the peaceful white noise of clicking knitting needles and tapping keys.

Carson jumps, spooked out of his headspace and a little guilty too—he had been four levels deep in an elaborate Facebook stalk on one of Aaron’s tagged pictures that led to an entire album of one of Patty’s house parties.

“A few times,” Carson says finally, trying to smile.  “Why?  Are you thinking about him?”  No matter how many times his grandmother doesn’t know who he is, it still hurts.  And it’s getting more and more frequent, so much that the times she  _does_  know are few and far between.

“You remind me of him, a little.  You’re yearning for something, I can tell.  He was too.”

Carson hums, not agreeing or disagreeing.  It feels so much like the verge of a moment of clarity, and as much as he hopes for it he holds himself back from hoping, terrified of the disappointment. “What is it he wanted so badly?”

She gets a far-away look in her eyes, looking past Carson’s right ear at the wall behind him.  “Well, he loved to write, and the first time he ever brought me something he wrote it said, ‘There once was a boy.’  And I told him it could use a little development and he brought back, ‘There once was a boy who wanted to fly.’  From a very young age that’s what he wanted most of all, to fly.”  Finally, she looks right at him.  “I never did find out the rest of the story.”

“Neither did I,” Carson says softly, closing his laptop and putting it aside.

“Sometimes stories don’t happen when we want them to, though.  Sometimes stories don’t ask for permission to be told.”

Carson leans in closer, almost sitting on her bed.  His heart is beating so fast he can feel it bouncing off his sternum.  “What do you mean?”

Her gaze shifts, then, and the moment is gone.  “You’re very nice.  You remind me of my grandson!” she says again, and Carson struggles to keep the smile on his face.

“Thanks, Grandma,” he says quietly, sliding back to the chair and opening his laptop again.

—

The nurses at the assisted living finally kick him out just after 7, over an hour past visiting times, but they’ve always bent the rules for Carson.

He turns on his phone for the first time all day to double-check the time, and sees he has a voicemail.  He presses send to listen as he climbs into the car.

_Carson, it’s mom.  I was craving nachos so I called into Los Taco Loco.  The order’s under Phillips, I’ll pay you back later._

He sighs, playing the message again, but there’s no telling what time she called.  He stops at the main road, contemplating.  He could go right, and home, make Easy Mac for dinner and risk his mother’s wrath on the off-chance that she’s asleep.  Go left, and he could stop by Los Taco Loco and actually have food that’s not from a drive thru or from instructions on a box.

It’s his stomach that makes the decision, growling loudly when he glances left.  _Los Taco Loco it is._

The dining room is almost empty when Carson pushes the front door of the restaurant open, just a few families finishing up their dinners.  The air is spicy-smelling and there’s an obnoxious amount of neon beer signs and knit ponchos and sombreros on the brightly-painted walls, as all good Mexican restaurants should.  Carson wonders vaguely why he’s never eaten here before.

There’s a girl working behind the counter, young enough that Carson doesn’t recognize her from school, working on something where Carson can’t see, pencil moving restlessly.  He clears his throat and she snaps her head up, a little flustered.

“Hey, uh, well, my mom called in an order but I don’t know when and it’s all my fault.  But I thought, um… it’s under Phillips?”

She laughs a little, though not unkindly, pulling a stack of receipts towards her.  “Oh yeah, Phillips.  It was called in an hour ago and no one picked it up.”

“That was supposed to be me, I’m sorry, I’ll just—”

“No wait, you don’t have to go!  It’s slow right now, I’m sure Erito will remake it, okay?”

“Oh,” Carson says, genuinely surprised at the niceness.  “Okay, thank you.”

She smiles, nods, and turns to go talk to the kitchen.  He fights with himself for just a second before calling out, “I’m sorry, could you maybe add a chicken enchilada to that?  With rice and beans?”

She can’t have gotten more than two steps but she still turns to nod her assent.  “Yeah, no problem.”

“Thanks,” Carson replies sincerely.  He hovers uncertainly by the counter, looking for somewhere to wait unobtrusively and thinking about fiddling with his phone when a loud metallic crash makes him wince and turn to find the source.

Frantically scooping silverware back into his bussing tray is an unmistakable head of spiky dark hair.  And if that didn’t give it away, the neon yellow and green armband sure did.


	5. Chapter 5

_..heart still beating but it’s not working…_

“Aaron,” Carson says, and it’s more out of being caught off-guard than to call his attention, but in the nearly-empty restaurant Aaron hears it just the same.

He throws the last of the escaped silverware into his tray with a  _clank_  and Carson can see his shoulders set before he looks up.

“Hey, Carson,” he greets, so cautiously Carson thinks of wounded animals again.

“Hey,” Carson repeats, feeling thoroughly out of place.  It’s not school so they don’t have to act like they don’t know each other, but it’s not like they’re  _friends_ , and all Carson can think about is how much of a baby face Aaron had in middle school.

 

Carson waits on Aaron’s cue on how to approach this, flipping his phone in his hand as Aaron pulls out a rag to wipe down the table.

He keeps glancing up, giving Carson little smiles that aren’t quite smirks, but makes no move to start conversation.  It feels like a test he needs to pass, somehow, and Carson is nothing if not an overachieving asshole.  He tries again.

“I didn’t know you worked here,” Carson says, trying to stay conversational.  Aaron tenses up again, small smile sliding right off his face and eyebrows falling to straight lines, and something jittery and unsure settles in Carson’s stomach.  “I mean,” he tries again, clearing his throat.  “It’s just that I’ve never been here before and I guess I would know if I had but I haven’t so I didn’t. Know, I mean.”

Aaron pauses halfway through wiping the table to raise one stupid pointy eyebrow, and Carson has a sudden urge to blush.  To fucking  _blush_.  The uncertainty disappears as quick as it came and he crosses his arms hautily, raising an eyebrow right back and leveling Aaron with his hardest gaze.

“Alright, you don’t have to be a hard ass,” Aaron says finally, and there’s that goddamn smirk again.  All is right with the world.  “Obviously, I do work here.” 

He gestures down at the bright red Los Taco Loco tee shirt he’s wearing—  _Once you go Loco, you never go back!_ — but Carson doesn’t trust himself to look longer than half a second.  (Last year’s yearbook contains a picture of a half-naked Aaron in a toga for Spirit Week and Carson spent a lot more time on page 56 than he cares to admit.)

“But,” he continues, mercifully hunching over to reach the far end of the table so Carson doesn’t have to think about how unnecessarily tight that tee shirt is, “even if you’d been here before you wouldn’t know.  I tend to, ah, disappear when kids from school come in.”

“Why?” Carson asks before he can stop himself.  He’s spent summers mowing lawns and counseling at the YMCA (that didn’t last long), and if he wasn’t so sure he was getting a full ride to Northwestern he’d be working now to make up the difference.  A job was nothing to be ashamed about.

Aaron laughs hollowly.  “Let’s just say some of my  _friends_  wouldn’t exactly approve.”

Carson nods, unsure how to respond.  How much did Aaron know he knew?  He hadn’t exactly been sneaky that day in AP Gov and Econ, but Aaron hadn’t acknowledged his existence, either.  Then again, that  _was_  part of their deal.  God, this is confusing. 

Of all the Mexican places in Clover, of which there are at least three, why did Sheryl have to pick this one?

Aaron picks up his bussing tray and moves to the next table.  Carson shifts on his feet, looking around and grimacing at the painted masks on the wall.  Slowly he edges towards the table Aaron is bussing, giving himself plenty of time to chicken out and Aaron plenty of time to tell him to back off when he’s working.  But all illusions of indifference go out the window when Aaron starts clearing the table.

He stacks cups and plates, seamlessly flowing into rearranging the scattered sauce bottles and sugar packets, all with the distinct air of practiced ease.  It’s quick and fluid, hypnotic even, and by the time he throws the rag on the table to wipe it down, Carson’s mouth is hanging open.

He glances up and Aaron’s looking right at him, smirking again, that eyebrow always cocked.

“Did you… did you not even look at the table?” Carson asks, feeling a little stupid and a lot in awe.

Aaron laughs, and it’s nothing like the joyless, empty laughs of sarcasm Carson’s heard before.  This one is big and full, showing every one of his teeth and scrunching up his eyes so small they almost disappear.  It brings up something warm and golden that bubbles right out to Carson’s fingertips and makes him feel almost… light.  Without any conscious permission he’s smiling too, so big his cheeks ache a little at the unfamiliar strain.

“Uh, no, I’m not that good,” Aaron says finally, still laughing through the words.  “But I have been doing this since I was thirteen, so, I’ve got a lot of experience.”

“I can tell,” Carson replies, surprised even at himself that he’s still smiling.  And that it’s… nice.

“To-go order for Phillips?”

Oh yeah, that.

Carson turns around and the girl from the counter is holding a plastic bag with two styrofoam to-go plates inside, glancing back and forth between Carson and Aaron with a smile that makes Carson want to start denying any and everything immediately.

He looks at Aaron, worried that he’s crossed some kind of line with this girl he doesn’t know, but Aaron’s shaking his head at her good-naturedly.

“None of your business, Francesca,” he scolds with a small smile, picking up his overloaded bussing tray.  Carson definitely does  _not_  admire the way his biceps flex under the weight.

The girl— Francesca, Carson supposes— scoffs and disappears to ring up his total, leaving them alone. 

“See you at school?” Carson says, now even more unsure of Aaron and their… _situation_.  Definitely not even in the same zip code as the word  _relationship_.

“Or will you?” Aaron teases, winking at Carson as he turns for the kitchen.

And Carson most certainly does not watch him leave.

Francesca is smiling still as she rings up the cash register, takes his money, prints his receipt.  It’s a little bit of a sad smile, wistful maybe, and Carson thinks maybe she wants him to ask, but he’s not sure what the right question is.  Just as she’s sliding the food over the counter to him, receipt tucked into the bag, she finally speaks.

“Almost five years we’ve been working here, since we were kids, really, and Aaron has never talked to  _anyone_  like he knows them.”

Carson picks up the bag slowly, waiting for her to continue.

“Until you,” she adds, smiling suggestively, but Carson’s not sure what she’s suggesting.

“I mean he told me he usually runs when people he knows come in,” Carson protests.  “I just caught him off-guard, that’s all.”

Francesca waves him off, shaking her head and turning her attention to the tired-looking couple hauling three kids under the age of 5 up to the register to pay.

“Really, I just had bad timing!  Good timing?  Whatever,” Carson calls, backing away towards the door.  She just gives him a really unsettlingly  _knowing_  gaze.

Carson shakes his head at Francesca, a little baffled, and can’t help but notice that Aaron’s back in the dining room, laughing at something one of the waitresses is saying.  It’s admittedly really cliché to say that everything goes into slow motion, but it sort of does when Carson catches his eye and watches Aaron’s eyes brighten and smile get wider like it’s on an HD screen.

Aaron lifts a hand to wave goodbye, and Carson does the same as he pushes the door open with his left elbow, curiously watching Aaron watch him until he has to turn and look where he’s going.

—

Just as the tardy bell for third period rings Carson  _thunk_ s his bag down, smiling at the way it makes everyone wince.

They’re all clearly hungover from sleep saturation over the long week (though Doug looks like he might be hungover on actual alcohol) and Vicki halfheartedly raises her middle finger from where she’s got her head down.

“Good morning,  _Chronicle_  crusaders,” Carson says loudly, laying on the fake sugar. If you wrung out his words you would probably get Splenda.

“As usual, I spent my break writing every article you lemmings didn’t bother to write last week. And copyediting, printing, and stacking all these papers—” he gestures to the stacked up  _Chronicle_ s he printed off earlier that morning— “so that  _you_  can fold and distribute them and then  _I_  won’t have to look at your faces for the rest of the day.”

He’s in the middle of a deep breath to dive back into his speech when a pointed throat clearing makes him stop.

Aaron’s eyes are rounder than he’s ever seen them and okay, maybe he was laying it on a little thick, but he had had a whole week to work himself up into a rage.

“Ah yes, everyone, Aaron Christopherson. Aaron, this is Vicki, Dwayne, Emilio, and Malerie. Welcome to the team,” Carson says quickly, sweeping a hand to point at each person.

Aaron looks a little stricken, but nods politely before moving to an empty seat in the back.

“Now, as I was saying,” Carson continues, eager not to lose his steam, “We all— no, not we, you—  _you_  all will be spending the rest of the period folding and stacking and distributing  _Chronicle_ s to the school.  After you get your assignments for this week.  Which are due  _when?_ ” he prompts.

Dead silence.

Carson sighs impatiently, and says like he’s talking to small children, “Friday at 3 pm, no later.”

 _“Friday at 3 pm, no later,”_  they repeat— Vicki like a funeral march, Emilio mumbling something resembling Spanish, Dwayne confusedly, Malerie quite enthusiastically and Aaron like he would rather be anywhere but there.  Fair enough.

“Alright, good.  Get to folding and I’ll write your assignments on the board.”

—

By Wednesday, Carson is a little… preoccupied.  Or just occupied.  His first official Writers’ Club with Aaron is looming ever closer and he’s really _uncertain_.  Like gut-twisting thought-nagging uncertain.  There’s still plenty of time for Aaron to pull pranks or start writing things to embarrass him or… something.  Carson’s sure he’s had plenty of time to think of something horrible to do.

To make things worse, no one’s got a thing done for the  _Chronicle_.

“Really?” Carson yells, but no one even flinches anymore.  Three days and Aaron’s already used to it.  Maybe he should get a megaphone.  “We’re almost at the halfway point, people.   _Friday_ —”

“3 pm,” everyone calls back, and okay so they’re  _willingly_  not doing their work.  Awesome.

“Vicki, really?  Not even the weather?  Literally all you have to do is copy and paste from The Weather Channel dot com.  That’s it.”

She just rolls her eyes, putting her earbuds back in.

“Malerie did you get that article on the Creative Writing II class’s fieldtrip?”

“No,” she says slowly, standing up with a notebook in her hands, “because Mrs. Finch scares me and also the Creative Writing kids are not very nice.  But I decided to make it up to you by  _writing_  some creative, um, writing.”  She clears her throat and Carson does his best to suppress the deep urge to roll his eyes. 

“’Mr. and Mrs. Dursley liked to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much—’”

“No, Malerie,” Carson deadpans, just keeping himself from pinching the bridge of his nose.  “That’s Harry Potter.  Those are J.K. Rowling’s immortal words you are trying to pass off as your own.”

“But it’s in my handwriting, look, see?” she says, holding the notebook out for approval.  Carson doesn’t even glance.

“Look, just try talking to Mrs. Finch again, okay?  Maybe another reporter could go with you for moral support?” Carson looks around the room hopefully but even Aaron is avoiding his gaze, doodling in a notebook.  He sighs.  “Just try, please.”

“Aaron,” Carson calls, a little satisfied when he at least looks guilty for not paying attention.  “Student Spotlight.  Who you got?”

“Um, I was thinking about asking maybe Remy Baker?  She just got a scholarship to Yale so, that should be cool.”

Carson sucks in a breath through his teeth as Malerie  _oooh_ s suggestively.  Even Emilio shakes his head and looks frightened.

“Good luck with that one soldier, that’s a snake in the grass with a hell of a bite.  Godspeed.”

Aaron smirks but doesn’t say anything, and Carson knows he can’t resist a challenge.  Maybe he’ll get  _one_  article this week at least.

When the bell rings, the room clears quickly.  Carson yells, “Writers’ Club is today after school like always, if anyone wants to join me!”  He doesn’t catch Aaron’s eye but watches his back until he melds into the rush of the hallway.

Malerie hovers by his desk.  “Carson, could I maybe come by Writers’ Club today?  I can’t stay the whole time but my bus doesn’t come until almost 3:30 so?”

Carson smiles warmly, actually really thrilled that someone was  _willingly_ attending a meeting.  “Yes!  Please do!  Actually, we need to discuss what we’re going to do about the Homecoming parade next Friday so, yes, absolutely.”

—

The journalism classroom is empty at 3:07 when Carson walks in.  He wonders if he should punish Aaron if he’s tardy—  _by doing what, making him write more?  I’ll be lucky to get the one article I told him to write_ — but he doesn’t have to worry because Aaron slips through the door right after him.

Carson nods a little, still strangely jittery, almost like he had been the other night at Los Taco Loco.  Being alone with Aaron wasn’t something he knew how to do.  He had never really been friends with someone his own age, and being forced to spend one-on-one time with a peer was really tough when he didn’t have the slightest clue how to act.  He kept waiting for Aaron to take the lead, but he was just as infuriating as always, smirky and ambiguous and just  _impossible_.

Aaron looks around, and Carson wonders if he should try and explain away the empty classroom, but he just moves to sit at the left table in the middle row without comment.  Being friends with Patty and Sara he probably knows all too well that no one would be caught dead in the Writers’ Club, unless they lost a bet.  Or took the blame for a bathroom vandalism, apparently.

Setting up his laptop as usual, Carson doesn’t really notice anything different about Aaron being at the meeting until he sits down to write and he just can’t _think_.  Glancing over the top of his laptop, he starts a little when Aaron is staring impassively back at him, his backpack on the floor untouched and his phone in front of him.  And god, Carson  _told_  him he was going to have to write, but Aaron is just sitting there like he’s daring Carson to say something about it.

Before things really have a chance to get awkward Malerie stumbles in, banging the door open hard enough to make Carson and Aaron look up.

“Sorry,” she offers as she plunks down into the desk right in front of Carson’s.

Aaron’s shoulders are shaking like he’s trying to stifle a laugh and Malerie does a double-take.  “What is  _he_  doing here?”

Carson exchanges a look with Aaron, a little panicked because they didn’t actually discuss what they would tell anyone in case they got found out.

“He’s, um,” Carson begins, faltering.

“I’m here because I have a literature analysis paper coming up,” Aaron lies smoothly, making Carson feel dumb for not having such a good story on the fly.  “ _Ew_ , right?  Luckily, Carson here is a genius at  _Beowulf_.  And editing!  So we worked out a deal and he said he would look at it for me today after school.”

Malerie accepts it without question, nodding as she pulls her Lisa Frank notebook out of her backpack.  “Cool.  So Carson, I tried that creative writing piece again, and I asked Mrs. Finch, I really did, but she was trying to find a pencil so she was really agitated and I was too scared to tell her that they were all in her hair, and—”

Carson sighs to cut her off, standing up and taking off his glasses to hang them on his shirt pocket.  “In a minute, Malerie.  Okay, first we have to talk about Homecoming next week.  Every club gets to have a trailer in the parade, and our good friends at Student Council were,  _coerced_  shall we say, to give one to the Writers’ Club!  Which is awesome, but we need to come up with some kind of theme and decorations, so.  What have you got?”

“Wait, does this mean I’m a member now?” Malerie asks excitedly.  Carson melts just a little bit because she looks so  _happy_  and it’s so nice to have someone actually smile instead of sneer when mentioning the Writers’ Club, and he hasn’t exactly been a nurturing mentor to Malerie in  _Chronicle_  meetings.  He decides to remedy that immediately.

“Of course you are, Malerie.  In fact… you’re the treasurer!”

Aaron is giving him the mother of all dubious looks, but Carson refuses to meet his eyes.  Malerie is excited and he’s doing something nice.

“Oh wow!  Thanks Carson!  How much money do we have?”

“None.  But we’ll need some for this float.  So Madam Treasurer, what do you think?”

They decide to go with the obvious, a notebook and pencil, and Malerie agrees to stay next Monday and Tuesday after school and let Carson drive her home so they can work on it.

Carson smiles genuinely as she waves at the door, pleased that he won’t have to ride on the Homecoming float alone.  If the Writers’ Club wants any new members, or even just a little respect, they’re going to have to at least make a showing to prove that the stupid stigmas at this school won’t get them down.

“See you tomorrow Carson!  You too, Aaron!” her disembodied voice calls from the hallway.

He opens his laptop again, slipping his glasses back on his nose, and is  _so_ enticingly close to slipping back into writing mode when he can  _feel_  Aaron’s eyes on him, his face turned fully towards him out in the edge of his vision.

And he is definitely staring, like he’s waiting for Carson to do a trick or something. 

“What?” he says waspishly, unnerved by Aaron’s silent judgment.

“Nothing,” Aaron says, amusement clear in his voice as he shakes his head slowly.  Carson stares back, eyebrow raised, but Aaron isn’t giving it up.  Shaking his head in turn, Carson goes back to his blissfully blank open Word document.

He’s about 150 words into the week’s featured article on the big rivalry football game Clover lost the week before, barely restraining himself from just stringing together two pages of pithy insults on the school’s ridiculous emphasis on sports as a measurement of achievement, when the questions start.

“How long have you worn glasses?”

Carson doesn’t even look up, answering automatically, “Since sixth grade, but just when I read or use the computer.”

Not even a paragraph later: “Why did you start the Writers’ Club?”

Carson spares Aaron a quick glance, and of course he’s not writing, tipped back in the chair with his feet on the table.  “Because I love to write, and I thought there might be like-minded people at this school.”

 “ _Too bad I was wrong_ ,” he murmurs to himself, right-clicking to find a good synonym for  _lose._   He kind of wishes Aaron would push back too far, just to see him panic.  But then Carson remembers that day in AP Government and Econ and hates himself for wishing it. 

“Why do you still hold meetings if you’re the only member?”

After clicking to change  _lose_  to  _bomb_ , Carson levels him with a longer, harder gaze.  He doesn’t look malicious, an open expression on his face and hands folded calmly behind his head, but Carson is suspicious anyway.

“I’m not the only member, Malerie is too.  And you, for a little while, even if secretly.”

He doesn’t even have to see the eye roll to know Aaron does one.  “Yeah and that just happened  _today_  Carson, so answer the question.  You’ve been doing this since sophomore year.”

Carson huffs, not in any mood for 20 Questions.  This is supposed to be his quiet private writing time, not the Spanish Inquisition.

“Because I’m stupid, obviously,” he grits out harshly, takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly.  Aaron’s still impassive, but there’s a little crease between his eyebrows that wasn’t there before.  “I guess,” Carson tries again, more calmly this time, “I just couldn’t give up on it.  I kept hoping— even though it was  _stupid_ and I was always disappointed— I kept hoping someone would walk through the door.”

He clears his throat, having got entirely too sappy and really not looking to give Aaron any more potentially volatile information than he already had.  “But they never did, so,” Carson says dismissively, turning away to signify that the conversation was over.  He takes another deep breath, centering himself again, and dives back into the article.

“Until me,” Aaron says, so quietly Carson guesses it was just to himself.  He has to close his eyes against the depressing truth of that statement, and pretends not to hear.

It’s not until he’s punching the last period with a flourish, scrolling up the page to preliminary edit, that he realizes Aaron hasn’t made a noise louder than breathing in the past— he checks the clock— at least twenty minutes.

He flicks his eyes up from the computer, startled to find Aaron staring  _again_.

“ _What?_ ” Carson spits, not sure if he should be insulted or flattered, and very much wanting to crawl under the desk.

“I like watching you write,” Aaron says easily, shrugging.

“Ooookay then,” Carson says on a long breath, not sure what to do.  He never does when it comes to Aaron.

He pulls out his list of assigned articles, just about to ask Aaron how the spotlight on Remy Baker is coming, when he notices Aaron’s hand tapping incessantly and the words change right before they tumble out of his mouth.

“Why are your fingernails painted?” Carson asks, trying to sound uninterested while burning with curiosity.  He has always known Aaron was a bit of a free spirit, with the whole  _Pretty in Pink_  wardrobe and obnoxiously spiky hair, but the nail polish is a new one.

Aaron lifts the hand, curling his fingers in to look at the nails like he somehow forgot that they’re about six different shades of purple.

“Oh,” he says, still regarding his nails, “Francesca dragged me on an errand with her on our break, which turned into her testing twenty different shades of purple to find another bottle of nail polish she doesn’t need.  So I was the guinea pig.”

Carson sucks in a breath, missing most of what he said because this is the first time Aaron’s mentioned their chance meeting at Los Taco Loco since it happened.

“Look, Aaron, about that—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he interrupts, waving his hand in a way that Carson knows he picked up from Francesca, right down to the pursed lips.  “All part of the deal, remember?  We know each other, obviously, but it doesn’t have to be any more than like, head nods and polite conversation, like you said.”

And for some reason completely unfathomable, it feels just like he’s been punched in the gut and present-Carson is very upset with past-Carson’s rule-setting.

“R-right, good,” Carson says finally, smiling tight-lipped in response to Aaron’s wide, easy grin.  “Just like I said.”

 

 

 

###  **Chapter 5.5:**

Student Council meetings always leave Carson with a vague pulsing headache and a strong craving for a cigarette, even though he’s never smoked.

With homecoming coming up, an emergency Friday afternoon Student Council meeting had been called and he had to go straight to the library meeting room after class.  He settles in for another grating afternoon, this one worse than usual with Claire and Remy and Scott anxious and lashing out about planning and details and perfection.

“I’m concerned about Salad Dressing Day,” Claire announces, and Carson hopes to god that she’s on the last bullet point of her ridiculously long list of Homecoming concerns because he’s about to start banging his head on the table.

“Explain to me again how that works?” Justin asks, and Carson sighs aloud, not for the first time that afternoon, because they’ve  _already been over this_.

“Why don’t you tell him, Carson?” Remy snaps.

“Gladly,” Carson shoots back, uncrossing his legs from where they’re propped on the table and putting them on the floor so he can lean forward.  “Everyone comes to school covered in lettuce sauce.  Mayonnaise, oil and vinegar, and all.”  He laughs, but no one else joins in.  Justin just looks more confused.

“Carson!” Claire shrieks, looking scandalized.  “Justin, honey, it’s when everyone takes inspiration from the names of salad dressings for their outfits.  You know, cowgirl for Ranch, Hawaiian shirts for Thousand Island.  It’s  _fun!_ ”  She gives Carson a pointed look.

“It’s  _lame_ ,” Carson interjects, “and when everyone shows up in racist French and Italian costumes we’re going to end up on blogs and national news media.  Look, I don’t trust a single person in this school to actually take this seriously enough to do it tactfully.  They’re all going to show up in coconut bras and fake handlebar mustaches with berets and embarrass themselves and everyone else.  Especially me.”

 

They don’t look happy, which means they’ve both realized and accepted that he’s right.  He smiles smugly, turning back to his notebook.  Today alone he’s thought of three new torture devices, and one of them is forcing the victim to listen to Remy’s bitchy rants until they go insane.  He’s got firsthand proof that it works.

“Why don’t we do like, crazy sock day?” Nicholas suggests, which is especially funny because Carson can’t remember ever seeing him actually wearing socks.  He’s that flip-flops-all-year-round type of douchebag.

“We’re already doing mismatch day, isn’t that like, the same thing?” Remy scoffs.

They argue for ten minutes and are about to start googling for ideas when Carson finally can’t keep quiet any longer.  “Oh my god, just do a pajama day.  Everyone rolls out of bed at the last minute anyways, you might as well let them roll right on out the door and into school.”

Hilariously synchronized, they all turn to look at him like he grew three more heads.

“What?” he demands, defensive, “I have ideas too, you know.  And they’re usually pretty good, seeing as my IQ is a good twenty points higher than 90% of this school.”

None of them gratify him with a response, but Claire nods decisively.  “We’ll go with pajama day, then.”

When he finally escapes it’s close to 4:30 and the hallways are predictably deserted as he makes his way to the journalism classroom, hoping but not at all expecting to see an article or two in the submission tray.

Walking from the library he approaches the door from the opposite direction he usually does, down the English/History hallway and forcing him to pass the big student activities bulletin board.

He hasn’t really stopped to contemplate the board since two Writers’ Club meetings ago, swept helplessly along by the current between classes and not walking by it before or after school unless he makes a conscious effort.  And he doesn’t, because he heard ripping paper walking into school the day after his vicious stapling and didn’t stick around to know for sure.

He looks at the board now, though, in the safety of the silent hallways that feel so much different after hours, when the sun is setting and his words and footsteps echo off the walls instead of being swallowed by chaos.  They’re all gone, just like he thought, only a red ripped snippet stuck to a staple left there as a reminder that he—  _and Aaron_ , his mind obnoxiously reminds him— had put anything on the board at all.  Carson can’t stop himself from reaching out to touch it, the stupid irrational disappointment and rejection settling like lead in his stomach.

A door swings open down the hall, and Carson jumps back from the board, tries to look innocuous.  But he scowls when he realizes it’s the door to the journalism classroom, his feet moving to action before his brain can even fully process, jogging to intercept the person who probably vandalized his classroom or _worse_ —

He doesn’t slow down, adrenaline pumping for the worst case scenario of having to face a disgruntled drama geek offended over his last review or god, an offensive lineman, and ends up almost smashing right into Aaron.

“Woah, there!” Aaron exclaims, comically shocked, and Carson changes tact immediately to try to get as far away from him as possible.  He’s so not in the mood to deal with the weird vibes and overly-invasive questions that he feels compelled by a stupid earnest face to answer honestly. 

Just as Carson is about to stumble sideways from the abrupt change in direction, hands— really  _strong_  hands— grip his upper arms firmly until he finds his balance.  Carson jumps back from the casual touch, shrugging out of Aaron’s hands and thankfully he doesn’t linger, dropping them immediately.  The skin on Carson’s biceps tingles like a fresh burn and he ignores the crawling goose bumps that follow and make him want to shudder.

“What are you doing in the journalism classroom?” Carson asks flatly, folding his arms and pointedly not rubbing his upper arms, even if the prickling doesn’t stop.

Aaron’s face falls a little, and he takes a step back.  It’s weird, even with their awkward Los Taco Loco interaction, that Carson has caught him  _this_  off-guard.  He’s a little flustered, hair sort of flattened and his normal bravado dialed down quite a few notches like the two things are connected.  Carson wonders if he shaved his head if all the sass would go away too, like a bitchy teenage Samson.

“I write for the  _Chronicle_  don’t I?” Aaron starts, his hands held up in peace offering but the faint edge of snark still there like he doesn’t know how to lose it.  “I had a make-up test after school and didn’t make the 3:00 deadline but I thought I would see if you were still here anyway.  I was going to just email it to you, but I thought you might come back so I left you a hard copy.  So it’s um, in there.  I didn’t touch anything else.”

Carson raises his eyebrows higher and higher with each sentence, finally dropping his arms.  “You… actually wrote your article?”

“Yeah?” Aaron says, an even split between mocking and concern.

“Oh, okay.  Well, that’s good.  Thanks,” Carson adds the gratitude as an afterthought, feeling a little dizzy and not at all sure how Aaron takes his words because he’s not even sure how he’s feeling himself.

“I gotta get to the restaurant, cause my shift started like twenty minutes ago, so I’m just gonna…” Aaron trails off, throwing a thumb over his shoulder.

“Alright,” Carson says, nodding automatically.

“See you later,” Aaron waves, turning for the double doors at the end of the hallway.

Carson doesn’t say anything, worried that something incredibly stupid will fall out of his mouth, and leans weakly against the door frame for just a few seconds before the rare and beautiful sight of typed white pages in the submissions tray forces his feet to move.

It’s all there, his article “Born-and-Raised Cloverite Heads for Yale” neatly typed and stapled together.  Carson flips through it quickly, still in disbelief, but yes there’s words and they make  _sense_  and half of them are no doubt from Remy Baker with the rampant overuse of SAT vocab word.

He’s seriously thinking about collapsing into the desk chair when he realizes there’s another article under Aaron’s, this one with both his and Malerie’s names on the byline.

“ _Creative Writing II Gets Schooled in Prose_ ,” Carson whispers weakly, finally sitting before the exhaustion of the week and the shock of these typed sheets of paper does it for him.

He thinks about running after Aaron to say something, though he’s not sure what, but he’s probably long gone.  Carson picks up his phone, thumbing through the contacts to the staff list.  They have each others’ phone numbers, presumably for collaboration, but Carson’s never once had to use anyone’s.

He types out a text and hits send before he can talk himself out of it, tucking the articles carefully into his bag before he leaves.

 _Thank_   _you_.

**No problem.  Just doing my job.  I’m sorry that other people don’t have the same courtesy.**

And thanks to the deserted parking lot, Carson doesn’t even have to hold back his smile.


	6. Chapter 6

“Malerie, will you hand me those scissors?” Carson asks distractedly, waving a hand around in her general direction while trying to match up precisely the two sides of the cardboard.  Making costumes for homecoming was a little more difficult than he thought, but at the same time a lot more fun.

He had been worried about spending hours of time with Malerie without the pretense of writing to fill in the conversation, but she was suprisingly really easy to talk to.  Funny, too, and she even laughed most of the times Carson made jokes, even if they were probably too clever for her to fully understand.  It was nice— no, pleasant really, almost comfortable— and it’s not until he drops her off at her front door Monday afternoon that he realizes they never ran out of things to talk about.

On his drive home, still smiling from the successful afternoon, he passed a bench emblazoned with a familiar logo— a goofy, dancing taco.  He thought about Aaron, and how maybe talking to him wouldn’t be so bad either, if he ever got the chance to try.  Carson doesn’t let the idea dwell, not optimistic enough to delude himself into thinking he and Aaron could ever really be friends when they’re both who they are in a town like this, but it’s a nice thought.  A really nice thought.

 

Just after 4 o’ clock on Tuesday and they’ve fallen into a comfortable silence, Carson determined to line up the tie closures on the back of his pencil outfit and Malerie painting a pretty impressive marbling on the giant composition notebook.

It’s pajama day, and Malerie’s bunny slippers are a little smudged with paint but Carson doesn’t have the heart to point it out.  He’s staunchly not participating in the theme days, partly because it would take a lot of extra effort he doesn’t have and mostly because he just doesn’t care.  There’s no chance of him getting in the yearbook even if he did have the most creative outfit, and, the way he sees it, in less than a year he won’t even remember this week.

“Can I ask you something?” Malerie ventures, and that’s when Carson notices how nice the quiet was.  He’s not even annoyed by her breaking it.

“Of course you can, Malerie, you don’t have to say that every time.”

“Right,” she nods, glancing up once as she shuffles around to reach the other side of the cardboard.

“Do you think Aaron is cute?”

Carson sputters, dropping the pencil costume.  “I—  _what?_ ”

She shrugs, unconcerned as she dabs her brush into the black paint.  “For me, of course.  He was just so nice when he helped me talk to Mrs. Finch for my article.  I didn’t know he was so nice, you know?  He’s always standing around Patty and Sarah when they make fun of me so I just always assumed he was making fun of me, too.  But he came up to me on Thursday after journalism and offered to help, and he skipped lunch to help me interview Mrs. Finch and some students, and then he skipped again on Friday to help me write the article.  So I guess he really is a good guy.”

She doesn’t notice that Carson’s completely taken aback.  He hadn’t asked why both her and Aaron’s names were on the article, just assumed that he had found a kid or two to interview and she was overzealous about thanking him.  He hadn’t expected any of that.

“I guess he really is,” Carson echoes, absently running the ties he hasn’t yet made holes for through his fingers.  His mental picture of Aaron shifts yet again, stretching and molding around this new revelation.

They fall back into their work, bickering good-naturedly over what quote should be on the composition notebook (Malerie wins with “the write club for you!” though Carson tries to pretend it was his idea).

Carson is prepared to deflect her, but she doesn’t mention that he never answered the question.  He’s not sure if he’s ready to answer it for himself.

—

Aaron doesn’t start bombarding him with questions this time in Writers’ Club.  And— Carson has to check more than once— he’s actually writing.  He’s got pen and paper he brought himself, hand steadily moving across the page, pausing sometimes to chew thoughtfully on the cap or tap it on the corner of his mouth, but there’s no doubt that he’s writing.

Malerie had swept in before catching her bus, proudly showing Aaron something in her notebook instead of Carson.  He actually felt a little twinge of jealousy, but Aaron’s teasing assured him it was just another  _re-write_  of hers.

She did talk to Carson, too, asking about the club’s budget again (there still wasn’t one) and about her article for the week (the horrible accident in Monday’s bee keeping club meeting).

“Bye Carson!” she had said, watching him through the camera perched in her hand.  “Bye Aaron!”  He ducked a little as she swung it in his direction, still not used to the constant lens on him.  “See you tomorrow!”

Aaron shook his head at her, laughed a little, and then he pulled out loose-leaf paper and a purple ball-point pen, and began to write.

Carson’s half-heartedly editing the fifth draft of his entrance essay for Northwestern, bored and lost without an article to write until Homecoming is over, when watching Aaron becomes a lot more interesting than rephrasing sentences so they don’t all start with “I.”

He first looks up when Aaron starts tapping the end of his pen on the desk, intent on scolding him for disrupting sacred writing time.  But Aaron’s not looking up guiltily as he should be, not even when Carson clears his throat pointedly.  He acts like he can’t even hear him, just scribbling something out and that purple pen always moving.

Disgruntled but not looking for a fight, Carson sighs and turns back, opening up a game of minesweeper, refreshing fmylife.com.

A tiny sigh gives Carson an excuse to look again.  He’s stopped writing, pen still hovering over the page and that crease between his eyebrows that means he’s upset, teeth flashing white where they’re digging into his bottom lip.

It’s really personal, almost intrusively so, the way Carson can almost see what he’s thinking, how he’s turning words over in his mind to find the right one and to fit them together the right way.  He’s never really seen Aaron so vulnerable, never been able to watch him with his guard down.

Carson can feel his face heating up and looks pointedly back to his laptop, shaking himself mentally.  It was silly to be thinking anything about Aaron other than the fact that he apparently loses the ability to focus in his presence.  It’s probably all the freeze-hold hairspray causing interference in his mental process.

He doesn’t try to break Aaron out of his zone again, no matter how many times he shifts around and makes the chair squeak loudly.  Really, Carson’s proud of himself for not saying something rude and ruining the whole afternoon— with as prickle-flushed hot as he feels, irritation is right under the surface.  By pure determination he manages to block Aaron out almost entirely, until there’s a low rumble in the room, a hum that pulls him carefully out of the  _Tribune_  article he’s engrossed in, niggling at the corners of his consciousness until he can’t stop himself from looking up.

The scowl of concentration is gone, a little upward curve to his lips now, and he’s writing even more furiously than before, eyes following the pen like his brain is moving even faster than his hand.  There’s something magical— Carson would mentally slap himself for the word, but it’s  _true_ , it totally is— in finding a writing streak, Carson’s always known, but it hits him tenfold to see it on someone else’s face.

Not just someone else’s face,  _Aaron’s_  face, the same Aaron that sat in front of him in kindergarten and then again in fourth grade and then again in eighth and ninth grade English and tenth and twelfth grade history.

He tries to look away, but Carson reads the same sentence three times before his eyes wander right back, that tiny smile growing and widening and brightening as he watches.

Aaron who held a baby chick with him on that field trip to the farm center and didn’t laugh when Carson said he never wanted to see a cow again, even though they’re in every field in a hundred-mile radius of Clover.

There’s awe, almost, like Aaron himself can’t even believe what he’s doing, actually sitting down and putting thoughts on paper.  Carson remembers the first time he felt that relief, that exhale when something inside him was finally out in the world, wonders if he was half as luminescent as Aaron is right now.

Aaron who nevers answers questions in class, who wore a graphic tee shirt every day of the seventh grade and never gives oral presentations, who cuts up in class but never gets in trouble because he’s so damn charming.

Carson looks away quickly as Aaron’s pen finally pauses, carefully pretending he wasn’t paying a bit of attention.  Aaron sighs happily.

“Finished?” Carson asks, attempting for disinterested.

“Yes,” Aaron breathes, the awe written all over his face now in his voice.

Something like pride pulls at Carson’s lips, bubbles up warm in his belly.   _This_ is what the Writing Club can do,  _this_  is what he wants.  That wonderstruck face is what he wants to see, to know that he had a little piece of influence in creating it. 

Wow.  He had almost forgotten why he was working so hard, pushing against the current, slogging uphill both ways every day: that face.  That feeling.  That’s why he loves to write.

Carson makes a kind of strangled hum in response, heart beating loud in his ears as he pulls open a blank Word document and then stops, digging his old notebook out of his messenger bag.

The cover is a little scratched and the back pages are all bent, but it’s still there.  The last thing he wrote was an ode to the quadratic formula that he doesn’t even remember.  The pen feels good in his hand as he gets situated, resting his elbows on the desk and opening to a clean sheet.

“Carson?”

“Hmm?”  he looks up, still sorting through the ends of word-strings floating around, all of them begging to be transcribed.

Aaron props his chin on a fist, putting the pages down.  “You look… different?”

Carson cocks his head, wiggling the pen in his hand.  The ideas still swirl restlessly, crossing and un-crossing, melding and splitting and shifting.  So many possibilities…

“Like… more relaxed?” Aaron ventures.  “Maybe?”

Carson nods slowly, feeling it himself.  “Inspired, I think,” he answers honestly, smiling at the way Aaron looks a little shocked, a little pleased, perhaps?  “I know now what you meant about watching me write.”

Aaron nods back dumbly like he’s trying to reshuffle his thoughts.  Carson knows the feeling.  He pulls the notebook closer and Aaron picks back up his purple pen.  Carson doesn’t even complain when he hums through the rest of the afternoon.

——

“Oh god, this is a di _saster_ ,” Carson half-yells, holding his eraser headpiece on with one hand.  His words get swallowed up by the fanfare on the other side of the very full bleachers, the booming voice over the loudspeaker.

“Calm down, Carson,” Malerie is saying, but Carson’s only half-listening, pacing furiously in front of their finished float.  Everything had just been going too nicely today.  Algebra II hadn’t made him want to die, the float had come together without any problems, and Aaron had even given him a discreet sort of smile when he passed.

There was no time to think about such happy things, though, when in the last ten minutes Claire Mathews has lowered the bitch boom, taken away their truck to replace the broken-down cheerleaders’ (and Carson could absolutely kill her right now if it wouldn’t hurt his chances of getting into Northwestern) and simultaneously crushed all his dreams.

“You know what you have to do,” Malerie says, struggling to cross her arms over the notebook costume.

He  _needed_  this, he needed the Writers’ Club to get a little respect if he had any hope of submitting something extra to Northwestern (because goddamn it, anthologies and literary magazines require participation from other people, the very people that  _hate_  him).  He needed something to make him feel like the whole thing wasn’t in vain, like he didn’t kill himself on the  _Chronicle_  and Student Council and the Writers’ Club just to get shit on by every person he tried to serve.  He needed—

Malerie is waiting, not trying to touch him or to reason with him anymore, just watching.

“Don’t make me do it.”

“You have to, Carson.  You know he’s the only one that can help.”  She shoves a phone into his hand, and he doesn’t want to know where she stored it in that outfit.

He’s the first one on the list.  Carson dials, back to pacing.  He’s jittery, overwrought and exhausted and  _furious_.  God, he’s furious.

_“Hey, Malerie! What’s going on, aren’t you at the game?”_

“Aaron, it’s Carson,” he says quickly, knowing the band was warming up and halftime was fast approaching.  Aaron makes a surprised sound (happily surprised, Carson’s brain supplies obnoxiously) but he steamrolls right over it.  “We have a problem.  The League of Evil Pom-pom Waving Bitches took our truck.  Do your parents still have that big pick up?  Is there any way you could bring it to the football field?”

He pauses to inhale, but Aaron stays silent.   _Fuck._   “Oh god you’re probably at work, aren’t you?  And I promised you wouldn’t have to be here, there’s no way you can do this without the whole school knowing you’re involved with me— I mean, with the Writers’ Club— fuck, Aaron, I’m—”

_“Carson!  Carson, take a deep breath.”_

He does, and holds it in, waiting.  He can’t expect Aaron to do this, not when all Carson has done is demand things of him, not when it would expose everything.  Especially not when it would mean the absolute world to him.

_“I’ll do it.”_

“You will?” Carson asks dumbly, not daring to let himself hope.

_“Of course.  I’m in the Writers’ Club too, aren’t I?  How long do I have to get there?”_

Carson gives him the details and hands Malerie back her phone in stunned silence.  “He’s on his way?” he tells her, uptalking at the end like he isn’t even sure himself.

She whoops, throwing up both arms in celebration.  “Yes!  I told you!  Aaron’s a good guy.  Now let’s get on our float— it’s time to show off!”

—

“Are you sure about this?” Carson asks one more time as Aaron double-checks the hitch, both of them leaning close together out of Malerie’s earshot. 

Mr. Christopherson’s white Chevy was no less than a noble steed pulling into the grass lot behind the stadium, and the look on Claire’s face when she realized Carson had called for backup was more than satisfying.

“Carson, you’ve asked me three times now, my answer hasn’t changed,” Aaron replies, a little exasperated, but he sounds sure.

“Okay,” Carson agrees finally.  “I just had to make sure that you weren’t just like, putting on a brave face for Malerie.”

“It’s okay.  I could have said no, and I didn’t.”  Carson can’t help but catch his breath a little when Aaron looks him straight in the eyes, feeling like something important is happening.  A loud cry from the stands, a fanfare from the loudspeakers.  Second quarter is over, and so is the moment.

“Besides,” Aaron shakes his head a little, a hint of that old smirk ghosting across his lips, “no one in their right mind would recognize me like this.”

He’s right.  The Aaron Christopherson that attends Clover High School wouldn’t be caught dead in threadbare sweatpants or a t-shirt from the 2006 Clover 5k, much less an old Giants baseball cap.

Carson couldn’t control his face when Aaron had stepped out of the truck, no matter how eternally grateful he was to see him.

“What? You caught me halfway through Skyward Sword!” he had protested, shoving Carson’s shoulder playfully when he just raised his eyebrows higher.  Carson had laughed it off, ignoring the swoop in his stomach at the contact.  That was new.

Malerie’s testing out the movement of the giant notebook when the first float starts moving— the homecoming court on a giant green and white travesty covered in clover leaves.

“Your chariot awaits,” Aaron murmurs right next to Carson’s ear, and there’s absolutely no way he can help the shiver that rattles him to the core.

Unsteadily he takes the hand Aaron is holding out, climbing up onto the hitch and then the float and carefully avoiding his gaze.  He’s scared if he looks at Aaron right now he might see something that he’s not physically equipped to handle.

He lets Malerie fix his eraser headpiece, willing his heartbeat and breathing to go back to normal until he hears the driver’s door of the truck shut.

“Let’s do this,” she says joyfully, picking up her video camera.  Carson nods decisively, gripping the metal post as the float lurches into motion.  He does not think about Aaron’s voice, low and warm in his ear.  He does not, he does not, he does not.

As they round the corner into the stadium Carson starts to panic, just a little.  The cheerleaders are right in front of them, screaming about defense, and behind them all fifty-five members of the FFA are clustered to carry a banner they won at a national competition, so they’re worse than a sore thumb with just two sorry people on this float.

“Are you okay Carson?  You look like you’re gonna hurl.”  Carson tears his eyes away from the packed-out stands and Aaron’s got his entire head shoved out the driver’s side window, twisting to see Carson’s face.

“Oh my god  _watch where you’re driving_ ,” Carson hisses, secretly really glad for a distraction.  Aaron complies, shifting the side mirror instead so he can watch Carson in the reflection.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Aaron prompts, yelling a little over the slowly increasing sounds of the crowd, and Carson watches his eyes flick back and forth from the back of the cheerleaders’ float and his face in the mirror.

He thinks for a second that he should just clench his teeth, find the will to stand up and do this on his own grit, handle it alone like he always has.  And then he remembers Aaron writing, open and unafraid even when Carson was right there watching.

“What if they laugh,” Carson blurts, screaming over the roar of the crowd. “What if they throw things, what if they just go totally _silent_ , what if—”

“Not gonna happen,” Aaron yells back, and he’s  _laughing_.  Carson waits, the firm grip of anxiety twisting knots into his stomach and oh god he’s totally going to throw up.  He can see Aaron fiddling with something, the air conditioner…?

Loud music is suddenly blaring, making the float shake under Carson’s feet.

“What?” Malerie yelps, and Carson just shakes his head.

_Now I’m not trying to be rude_

_But hey pretty girl I’m feeling you…_

Aaron’s face is back in the mirror, grinning so wide Carson can’t help but smile back.  He mouths the lyrics, wiggling in his seat and Carson knows he’s dancing.

There’s no time to get nervous again when they’re right in front of the first people lining the fence separating the stands from the track that surrounds the field.  Carson clenches his jaw even as Malerie is jumping and waving next to him, playing it up for the crowd.

And they— don’t react.  The adults clap politely, nodding, the children point at his pencil costume, and the kids from Clover High just look bored, eyes sliding from the cheerleaders to the FFA like his float isn’t even there.

Carson exhales, and finds he’s okay.  It’s not a warm welcome, but it’s not tossed popcorn either.  He smiles a little, waving at the five-or-six year old girls who keep screaming “Pencil Boy!  Pencil Boy!” and ignoring his peers just as they ignore him, and it’s fine.

The chorus comes on right in front of the student section, what Carson had been dreading the most, almost resolved to just closing his eyes until they’re past— when there’s singing.  He can’t believe it.  The entire student section of Clover High School is belting  _Remix to Ignition_  at the top of their lungs, arms slung around each other and dancing like they’re at their first seventh grade boy-girl party.

He forgets to wave or smile or even look stoic, standing in complete disbelief.  It’s not like they’re chanting  _Carson! Carson!_  but this is nearly the opposite of the quiet cold disdain the Writers’ Club usually gets.  And it’s all because of this song, something from their childhood, something that he can connect with people his age,  _finally_ , it’s all because of— Aaron.  It’s all because of Aaron.

When the float finally passes the crowd to curve back into the grass lot he’s shivering and his right arm and both cheeks are numb from all the smiling and waving, but they did it.  And it didn’t suck, not even a little.

“Carson that was fantastic!” Malerie shrieks, dancing on the spot.

“It kind of was,” Carson answers, mind still reeling as the float jerks to a final stop.  Aaron’s scrambling out of the truck, not even cutting the motor.

“We did it!” Aaron screams, jumping up and down, and Carson can’t help but laugh at how absolutely ridiculous he is in those clothes and that hat, beaming up at Carson with something like pride.

He holds his hand out to help Carson down and the sudden vision of jumping into Aaron’s waiting arms is too tempting for comfort.  Carson breathes out, measured, and calmly climbs down the float and the hitch, bouncing a little when he reaches the ground.  Aaron helps Malerie down, too, and they all smile at each other like they’re about to dive in for a group hug or something equally as cheesy.

If this was a stupid high school coming-of-age movie, Carson thinks, that’s exactly what we’d do.

“You know what we need?” Carson says, rubbing his arms against the chill.

“A change of clothes?” Malerie scoffs, pulling at the notebook slung around her shoulders that’s starting to fall off.  Aaron laughs.

“Well, maybe, but no,” Carson says firmly, but he smiles.  “Tacos.”

—

Los Taco Loco is closing, but Francesca lets them in anyways, asking curiously about their outfits.  Aaron recounts the whole story, more excited and animated than Carson’s ever seen him.

It doesn’t strike Carson until halfway through his enchilada that this should be awkward, that he should have no idea how to have a normal dinner out with people his own age—  _friends_  his own age, because somehow that’s what this has turned into— but it’s not.  Not even a little.  Malerie and Aaron are like a comedy act, Carson cutting in with one-liners when they get too ridiculous, and it works.  They eat way too many chips and Aaron steals all the salsa and it’s something like wonderful.

Malerie excuses herself to the bathroom when they’re pretty much finished, Carson still nibbling at the chips left in the basket.

“Ugh someone take these away from me,” he says finally, laughing and leaning back, almost completely at ease.

“Tonight was the most fun I’ve had in a long time,” Aaron admits quietly, stirring his Sprite with the straw.

Carson tries not to take it as a personal compliment, but it warms him all the same.  “You saved the day, Aaron, you really did.  Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Aaron smiles, finally looking up, and Carson knows he means it.

“So, about our deal,” Carson starts, forging on past the twist in his stomach telling him to shut up, “does this mean…?”

“That we’re friends?  There’s just some things that you come out friends after.  One is fighting a mountain troll, and the other is successfully navigating a potentially traumatizing high school experience.  No matter what Patty Maxham or anyone else will think, I don’t care.  We’re friends.”

Carson grins completely stupidly, both at the answer he was hoping for and the Harry Potter reference.

“Good,” he agrees, taking a sip of water and trying not to wiggle happily.

“I don’t think I could have stayed away from you much longer, honestly,” Aaron says in a low rush just as Malerie comes back to the table already launching into a loud recounting of Claire’s horrified face.

Carson levels him with a hard stare, heart thumping hard and knowing he must have misheard, there’s just  _no way_ , but Aaron is completely engrossed in Malerie’s story like nothing’s happened.

He hisses  _“Aaron,”_  and finally he spares a quick glance, smiling secretly.  And he fucking  _winks_.


	7. Chapter 7

“You’ve never come home past 9.”

Carson flinches a little because it’s after 11, but Sheryl doesn’t sound upset, just flatly curious.  She’s probably on her tenth glass of wine by this point, so he’s shocked her eyes are even still open.

“Yeah, well, I told you earlier I was going to the game.  And then I went out to eat after with some… friends.”  The word feels weird in his mouth but sounds right out in the air, and it makes him smile.  He has  _friends_ , people that willingly want to be in his presence, that smile at him, that make him smile.  Friends.

“Friends!” Sheryl all but shrieks, clutching her wine glass to keep it from sloshing as she sways with laughter.  “Eighteen years and I’ve never heard that word come out of your mouth, not once.  Good one, Carson.  But next time you’re gonna drive all over town to ‘ _find your inspiration_ ,’ you’re paying for the gas.”

“But, I—” Carson tries again, but halfway through he knows she’s right.  Why would she have any reason to believe he just stumbled upon friends now?  “Alright, mom,” he sighs, hauling his pencil costume back to his bedroom.

 

He throws it on the bed, considers throwing it away, thinks about Aaron trading his old baseball cap for the eraser headpiece over a fourth basket of chips, and tucks the whole thing away in his closet.

His phone stays on him nearly the whole weekend, a total rarity for Carson.  Usually he can’t care less if it’s even charged, knowing if he ended up in a ditch (one of the three ditches in Clover) his mom would get the news before he could even dig out his cell phone to call a tow truck.

But he can’t put it down.  He carries it in his hand to get cereal on Saturday morning; it’s next to him in full view when he visits his grandma Sunday afternoon.

“Waiting on a call?” God, if even Grandma noticed he must be a new kind of pathetic.

“Not really,” Carson admits, pulling his glasses off to pick up his phone again.  Nothing, like he already knew.

“Who is it?” she asks, and for a second Carson can pretend this is his grandmother asking him an honest question about his life.  But behind her clicking knitting needles there’s no light of familiarity in her eyes.  “It’s wonderful to have someone call.  My grandson always says he doesn’t need friends, but he’s younger than you.  Maybe he’ll learn.”

Carson sighs, closing his eyes.  Oh how the mighty have fallen, going from hell-bent on getting out of Clover with not a single pang of regret to  _this_ — keeping vigil by a phone for no real reason.

“Oh, he learned,” he mumbles, nudging his phone with his finger.

“Who is it?” she asks again, stilling her needles to give him a look.  Even if she doesn’t think Carson in front of her is Carson her grandson, she still knows how to put him in his place.  The nurses have told him stories.

“His name is Aaron,” he admits finally, mortified to feel his cheeks heating up.

“Ahhh,” his grandma sighs, and Carson’s pretty sure she’s playing up the lovesick teenager whining to make fun of him.  He scowls at her.  “Well, if Aaron doesn’t call you, why not call him?”

He taps the screen thoughtfully, opens a blank message and half-types a sentence before he deletes it all, throwing his phone in his messenger bag.  He’s being stupid, sitting around wishing Aaron would text him when they’ve barely gotten on terms that aren’t a  _business agreement_. 

Aaron turning out to be a human being was also turning out to be a big problem for Carson’s sanity.

—

It’s not until he pulls into the parking lot on Monday morning that Carson realizes he has no idea what to expect.  Aaron had said they were friends, but it’s one thing to make promises in an empty Los Taco Loco and quite another to uphold it in the halls of Clover High.

Blearily he gives the janitor a weak smile as he lets him into the dead-quiet lobby, Carson the first one there as usual.  He slinks off to the Teacher’s Lounge, flash drive with the finished  _Chronicle_  in hand, and before seven o’clock he’s got a tottering stack lined up in the journalism classroom to be folded and sorted.

It’s his perfect writing atmosphere, the openness of the classroom and the relative silence inside and outside it.  Carson always liked the thought that his ideas had to go out into the ether, maybe gain a little experience, a little perspective, before they can come back and be useful.  It’s the reason he tends to procrastinate, to think on something for six days and twelve hours then stay up all night to write it right before it’s due.  It’s why he’s a careless self-editor, the ideas having sat in his brain for so long before finally getting out on paper that he can’t bear to read them through more than once.  It’s why he never asks for help and never lets anyone read his works in progress— Carson’s mind is a complicated place when it comes to what he’s writing.

He settles into his desk, pulling out his laptop and opening a blank document.  Usually he spends time in the mornings freewriting, getting out the random bullshit floating around in his head, the plot bunnies and naggingly nice combinations of words that block him getting to the things he needs to be working on (usually the ones he’s been neglecting).

There’s never an excuse for him to write narratives much anymore, so he starts with an image— two strangers meeting at a coffee shop, written in second-person because no one writes in second-person anymore, and what’s a Monday morning good for if not a challenge?  But then maybe it’s not the first time they’ve met, maybe they’re not strangers, per se, just strangers of the heart and not the face…

It’s right at 7:56 when he finishes, barely enough time to get to class.  Carson slams his laptop closed, shoving it into his bag and making sure the journalism classroom door locks behind him.

He stops at his locker to change his books when he hears it: Patty and Sarah.  He rolls his eyes to himself, listening to their inane chatter as he stuffs his Government textbook in-between a falling-apart composition notebook and a well-loved Sorcerer’s Stone paperback.

“Ugh and Megan was just  _so shitty_  this weekend. Hanging all over Gray, like who does she think she  _is_?”

Not even their usual standard of gossip. Carson grips the door to slam his locker shut and make for homeroom—

“ _Aaron!_ ” Patty screeches. “Hey babe, missed you this weekend!”

Carson freezes, head still in his locker. He could leave now, but he has to walk right past them to get to homeroom and, friends with Aaron or not, walking by Patty and Sarah when they’re on a bitch tangent wasn’t safe for anyone.

Judging by Aaron’s voice, he knows it too. “Oh hey, Sarah, Patty. What’s up?”

He sounds a little more cautious than he usually would be, and the thought makes Carson smile in spite of himself. Watching Aaron write and then save the day during Homecoming is giving him a weird pride complex— like, if he can rehabilitate one high school lemming to become his own person, he’s living right.  Something like that, anyways.

“Sucks that you had that family camping trip,” Patty snarks, and Carson almost hits his head on his locker door.   _Family camping trip?_   “Homecoming was a fucking  _riot,_  you should have seen how bad we creamed the Chargers.”

Aaron makes a kind of  _ah_  noise, sounding duly impressed.  Clover had been winning 35-3 just at the half, so it wasn’t exactly news, but damn Aaron was a pretty good actor.  Carson takes a mental note.  Maybe he’s going into theatre for college.

Carson realizes he’s never asked Aaron what he’s doing after high school.  No one ever asks Carson, either, but he makes it a point that they know anyway.

“You have to tell him the best part!”  Carson winces because  _ouch,_  Sarah’s voice is especially nasally today.

“Oh yeah,  _god_.  Okay, so you know the Writers’ Club right?”

Carson stops breathing.  Or maybe all the air gets sucked out of his locker.  He forgets to make it look like he’s searching for something, goes very still.

“Doesn’t everybody?” Aaron replies, laughing.  It’s laced with mocking derision that sounds pretty fake to Carson… but maybe that’s wishful thinking.

“And that Carson Phillips, always thinking he’s so much better than everyone else, ugh. Anyways, he got his stupid little club a float in the Homecoming Parade, can you believe it?”

“Wow, that’s crazy man!”

Okay so not such a good actor.  Aaron is laying it on a little thick, but Patty and Sarah don’t seem to notice.

“I know right?  You’re never going to believe what happened—”

Oh god Carson hasn’t thought this far into the plan.  He could walk away now, but as soon as they hear him close his locker in the thinning hallways they’ll turn around and know he was standing there the whole time.  He could just wait it out but having to hear Aaron agree with their ignorant drivel, even if it’s just for show—  _just for show, Carson, this is Clover High, keep your shit together_ — isn’t his idea of a good start to a Monday.

Patty doesn’t get very far, though, because just as she’s starting to speculate on the truck that saved the day— and thank god they’re just as blindly ignorant as the rest of the school or they could have already traced that license plate back to Aaron’s dad— the warning bell rings for homeroom.

Sarah squeals about tardies and Carson slumps against his locker, counting down from thirty until he can be sure they’re gone.  The flurry of noises and movement behind him reach a pinnacle but he just breathes, blinking unseeing at his Algebra textbook.

A clang of metal on metal makes him glance to the side and Carson gasps, startled. 

“Aaron, what are you doing?” he hisses, looking around furtively.  But no one’s paying attention to them in the rush to beat the tardy bell.

“Are you okay?” Aaron asks, distinctly cool and calm, careful where he’s leaning against the lockers just far enough away to be ostensibly not talking to Carson, looking straight at the prison-block wall that’s scuffed black over the garish green paint.  Carson looks over his shoulder to be sure, but no one’s giving them a second glance.

“I’m fine,” Carson grinds out, staring back into his locker.  He can’t decide if he’s more happy Aaron is talking to him or pissed that they have to pretend to ignore each other.  High school fucking sucks.

“Okay, alright,” Aaron says, sounding a little distracted, and Carson sneaks a peek at him only to look away quickly when he catches Aaron already looking.  He doesn’t even begin to try and process what may or may not have been expressed with those stupid Dorito eyebrows.

Aaron clears his throat awkwardly.  “See you in second period, then?”

Before Carson can reply he’s gone, obnoxiously bright— god and  _tight_ , who the fuck wears jeans that tight??— yellow jeans disappearing around the corner.

The tardy bell rings just as Carson closes his locker and he groans, slapping a hand open-palmed against the door just to hear it rattle.  Happy fucking Monday.

—

Dwayne looks fully conscious, and if that’s not an achievement for a Monday morning, Carson doesn’t know what is.

“You know what Mondays mean!” Carson calls without preamble, dropping stacks of  _Chronicle_ s in front of each person in turn.  Vicki sneers and Carson just smiles because behind her back Aaron’s rolling his eyes and warding her off with a cross sign.  She whips around when Carson starts to snicker but Aaron shrugs, innocence written all over his face.

Carson walks back to his desk, shaking his head and trying to get his face under control. 

He’s almost through writing their articles for the week on the board, half-listening to the dull roar behind him (and trying not to think anything but happy, friendly thoughts about Malerie and Aaron’s incessant chatter) when the PA speakers over their heads crackles to life. 

_Aaron Christopherson to the principal’s office, please, Aaron Christopherson to the principal’s office._

The childish chorus of  _ooh_  is annoying as all hell, but Carson can’t even think so far as to make them shut up because  _the fuck?_   Aaron’s face crumples for a fraction of a second but then he’s standing and smirking, shrugging at their interested, scandalized faces.

“Guess they found my secret stash,” he jokes, and Dwayne whoops, tapping fists as Aaron passes.

It’s only Carson that Aaron spares a glance for, the only one that sees the uncertainty that wrinkles his forehead, so quick Carson half-thinks he imagined it. Carson can’t get the image out of his head even as Aaron disappears into the hallway.

He feels shaken up inside, unsteady on his feet as he finishes the list on the board and the rustle of papers being folded starts up again, this time without discussion.

Aaron doesn’t return for the rest of second period. He doesn’t seem to be anywhere, and Carson would know— he spends his lunch searching the solitary corners of Clover High.  He even braved the dumpsters behind the cafeteria, but there was only the regular delinquents sharing a joint.  Dwayne squats down after Carson’s already seen him, and he just rolls his eyes.  If he wasn’t just completely disinterested in illegal substances he might do the same.  It would probably make British Literature a lot more interesting.

Maybe Aaron just left for lunch.  Maybe he got sent home for the day for something.  Maybe he got news that a relative died.  Maybe Principal Gifford was going to tell him that his exile to the Writers’ Club is over. Carson doesn’t even want to think about why that idea makes his stomach twist up unpleasantly.

—

Walking to AP Gov and Econ always feels like a death march (especially when it’s Economics, like it is every fucking Monday) but today he’ll have nothing to look forward to but Patty schmoozing up to Mrs. Bradley and another crazy-ass story about buying and selling cows—

Aaron’s sitting in his usual desk.

There’s no one else in the room, but even if there was Carson couldn’t help but stop in his tracks.  He should say something, ask something, but his mind has gone completely blank.

Someone shoves Carson’s shoulder accidentally-on-purpose as they push past him and he comes back to himself, moving to an empty desk in the back.  Aaron doesn’t look up from his desk even as the room fills up, his shoulders hunched up to his ears.

Carson can’t shake the feeling that something is really wrong.

Aaron doesn’t look up when Patty and Sarah start discussing the “trashy grinding” at the homecoming dance, which they no doubt participated in; he doesn’t look up when Mrs. Bradley launches into her usual starting monologue, this time about her Sunday-afternoon trip to the supermarket.

The entire class, Carson can’t stop glancing over.  Aaron hasn’t even taken out his Econ notebook, just staring at an empty desk.  Patty keeps whispering to him until he finally murmurs something back that seems to satisfy her and she turns around, back to sucking up.

He thinks about cornering Aaron when the bell rings, but Aaron gets out of the classroom before he can even stand up.

Carson stays in the journalism classroom until almost five o’clock, but Aaron doesn’t even come by to get his newspaper assignment.

The thought that he might have something to do with this is one Carson can’t shake, as hard as he tries.

—

On Tuesday, Aaron doesn’t come to school at all.  Carson even asks the homeroom teacher for the C/D seniors about it when he goes to drop off their newspapers, but Mr. Butler just confirms what he already knew.

Carson pulls out his phone between classes and pulls up a text, picks Aaron as the contact, then closes it.  He’s probably just sick, after all, maybe dealing with some family stuff.  Carson knows his older sister has a lot of medical problems, and Aaron used to miss school a lot back when they were younger because they had to go to appointments far away.  Nothing to worry about.

The empty chair in journalism is completely annoying, the lack of movement drawing his gaze every ten seconds, the distinct lack of Aaron’s laugh— and by proxy, Malerie’s— making the whole room feel unbalanced and off.

It’s not like Aaron’s going to be there forever, anyways.  Once he finishes his punishment Carson probably won’t ever see him again, not with Patty and Sarah monopolizing all his time at school.  And once he’s free from compulsory time with Carson he’ll probably realize that there’s a reason his own mother laughs at the idea of him having friends.

Carson doesn’t stay after school on Tuesday, doesn’t even walk back into the journalism classroom.

—

He almost considers skipping school himself Wednesday, but that feels like defeat.  He puts on his favorite shirt and gets up early enough to eat a real breakfast instead of just choking down a granola bar.

And then he nearly gets run over in the parking lot and steps in a puddle on the way into the building, so as always the universe is back to its usual shitty balance.

The first thing he sees is Patty hanging off Aaron’s arm like he’s a fucking piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean.  Carson bitterly wishes she was drown in her own stupidity.  As usual they’ve stationed themselves half a row of lockers away from Carson’s own and there’s no blocking out a voice three decibels and four octaves higher than everyone else’s.

“Oh my god, Aaron, you weren’t here yesterday so I couldn’t tell you.  So there was one of those shitty little school papers on my desk when I got to math class.”

Carson wrenches his locker open and starts changing his books as fast as he can.

“And I knew you had to write an article for extra credit and all—” Carson can’t even file that interesting bit of information away for future reference, he’s got to get  _out_ — “but imagine my surprise when then I saw your name with that camera freak’s!”

All the slamming and shuffling in the world couldn’t drown that out.  Anger is thrumming in Carson’s veins, well on its way to rage, a fierce protectiveness of not only his newspaper but Malerie and Aaron too.  How  _dare_  she, fucking Patty Maxham with her giant forehead and try-too-hard designer purse.

Aaron’s cool as a cucumber.  “Calm down, Patty, I just fixed some commas and she was so eager for me to like her that she added my name to the byline.  Fuck, I hate that class.”

It hurts.  Carson knows he told Aaron in the first place he could do exactly this, but saying it’s okay and then having to hear it… well, those are too different things.  A sad little echo of  _I couldn’t stay away_  makes Carson want to puke.

“Better be quiet, Captain Freak is listening in,” Sarah says in a not-whisper, and that is fucking  _it_.

Carson slams his locker shut and rounds on them.  “That’s right Sarah, Captain Freak here.  Which, at least  _I’m_  captain of something, because there are some things daddy can’t buy you, and the top spot on the cheerleading squad is one of them.”

Sarah looks offended, but at least she’s offended into silence.  Carson moves to walk past them when Patty butts in.  “Whatever, being the leader of a band of rag-tag freaks makes you the biggest freak of them all.”

Carson arches an eyebrow at her.  Really, they make it way too easy.  “Oh sure, Patty, no one likes the school newspaper.  But let’s talk about your dance line who couldn’t make it to finals at competition and didn’t even get a  _participation trophy_.  I think that makes you Captain Loser.”  She scoffs so loudly it sounds painful.

He tells himself he won’t look at Aaron but he does anyway, and he’s absolutely dumbfounded, mouth hanging open and everything.  Carson rolls his eyes at all of them and pushes by just as the warning bell rings.

—

No one’s writing in journalism class.  Usually it isn’t a problem, Carson enjoying the relative quiet so he can work on his own projects.  Today, though, Aaron keeps trying to say something and Carson has to keep cutting him off with pointed glances and quick shakes of his head.  He’s not getting a thing done, and all the while Malerie’s looking back and forth between them like it’s a tennis match and Vicki keeps throwing them more-annoyed-than-usual glances.

At five minutes to the bell Aaron stands up, a determined set to his mouth, and even Carson’s best bitch glare doesn’t work.

“Carson, I—”

Shoving his chair back, Carson talks over him.  “I’m going to make copies.”

He doesn’t even take anything with him, locking himself in the boys’ bathroom by the nurse’s office that no one ever uses.  Aaron has second lunch, so if he can just hold out until after the bell rings he should be safe.

He pulls up his Google documents on his phone just to have something to do and nearly throws it across the room when he sees what he wrote Monday morning.  He and his subconscious need to have a fucking chat, because completely irrational, slightly delusional romance fiction has  _got_  to go.

Fifteen minutes has to be safe enough.  When he gets back the journalism classroom is, thankfully, deserted.

It takes him a second to realize what’s different— all the notes and pens that had been strewn all over his desk are gone, his satchel sitting squarely in the middle of the desk.  He panics a little, cursing himself for leaving the room unlocked and abandoned, but when he opens his bag everything is exactly where it goes.

A little stunned, he picks up the bag to put it on his shoulder.  A note that was wedged under it flutters to the floor.

_Please tell me you know that wasn’t me._

He would know Aaron’s blocky handwriting anywhere.  The morning still a sharp sting, Carson tosses the note into the trash.  He’s just turning off the lights when he stops.  Fishing it back out of the wastebasket, he scribbles a response.  When he passes Aaron’s locker on the way to his next class he drops it in.

_Then who are you?_


	8. Chapter 8

He doesn’t want to leave the door to the journalism classroom open.

Carson has held a Writers’ Club meeting every single Wednesday for the past two and a half years, and the door always stayed open.  Even on the days when he felt like if he had to yell at one more anencephalic classmate his soul was going to shatter, even on the days where he wanted nothing more than to shut out the world for a little while, he left the door open.  But today is the first day he’s genuinely wanted to close it and turn the lock.

 

Settling in with his laptop— notebook ruefully shoved to the bottom of his messenger bag— Carson breathes deep.  This is what he knows, this is what makes sense.  He opens his article for the  _Chronicle_ , then his page of ideas for his extra project for Northwestern, and then closes it all in favor of a blank document.  He slides on his glasses, poises his fingers on the home keys and—

Nothing.  He’s got absolutely nothing.

He blows air through his teeth in frustration, halfway to opening a site to mindlessly scroll until he stops himself.  Writing is what he’s good at, writing is what he’s going to do for the rest of his life.  Not writing feels like defeat, especially after—

Slamming the lid on that train of thought, all so-called friends be damned, Carson dives in, typing anything that comes to mind.

> ##### the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
> 
> ##### stewardesses stewardesses stewardesses
> 
> ##### peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers if peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers then how many peppers did peter piper pick
> 
> ##### how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood
> 
> ##### both of those childrens’ rhymes are about penises
> 
> ##### high school fucking sucks
> 
> ##### why the fuck does anyone promise anything to anyone ever
> 
> ##### apparently articulateness is directly tied to emotions
> 
> ##### fuck you and your goddamn hair

He backspaces furiously.

> ##### Small towns seem specifically engineered by Satan himself to crush the life out of anyone who dares to want more.  The good ol’ boys and girls— the ones who will get married straight out of high school, get their Associates from community college if they’re lucky, and pop out three kids before 25— those are the people who thrive in small towns.  They’re born there, they willingly get stuck there, and then they die there.  And so the cycle repeats itself.
> 
> ##### It’s the kids destined for more, the kids that don’t quite fit anywhere, the kids that dream of something much bigger than corn fields and rusted out cars, it’s _those_  kids that have to fight just to survive.  When everything is saying _you can’t_ , when everyone is screaming  _you won’t_ , when even your own soul is whispering  _what if you fail_ , it’s a miracle that any kid makes it out of a small town alive.

The door swings open wide with a  _bang_  and Carson flinches horribly, heart skipping into a bruising pound and every muscle tensed—

“Shoot!” Malerie says loudly, shoving the door open wider with her elbow and rubbing at her hip where the handle of the heavy door probably left a bruise.  “That stupid door.”

Carson slumps back in his seat.  God, he’s an idiot.

“So,” Malerie blunders on, totally oblivious (or maybe willfully ignorant) to how much Carson isn’t in the mood for talking, “you totally ran out of journalism class before I could show you my rough draft of my article on that new vampire movie.  It’s all words I put together and everything!  Well, I did use one reference to The Taming of the Shrew, but Aaron said it was totally appropriate—”

It’s like his brain just shuts off.  He closes his eyes.  “Malerie, I’m trying to work.”  It’s a total lie, he hasn’t written a single thing worth keeping.

“Oh.  Sorry.  What are you working on?”  She sounds so absolutely contrite that he almost feels bad.  Almost.

“Just, my article for this week,” Carson grinds out to his laptop screen, typing aimlessly to end the conversation.

And it works, for about sixty seconds.

“So what happened today?  You just kind of ran out like you left your iron on.  You didn’t even take any papers to copy.”

Carson breathes, tries to stay calm.  Malerie couldn’t know, she always sees the best in everyone, Aaron especially.  She couldn’t know the awful things he stood there and let them say.  She’d probably defend him, saying Aaron was just protecting himself.

Whoever he is.

“I just had to clear my head,” Carson says finally.  It’s totally lame but just flippant enough that it passes.

Malerie shrugs.  “Whatever you say.”  And it’s looking like she’s going to drop it until she adds, “Wait, it didn’t have to do with Aaron, did it?  He wouldn’t stop tapping his pen, and when you left he kind of  _deflated_ …”

Carson tries to keep his face under control, ducking his head behind his laptop.  “No, of course not,” he says, too flat to be convincing.

“Are you sure?” Malerie presses, just as oblivious and well-meaning as ever.  “Because if it is I bet—”

Both of them startle at the door being flung wide open.  It’s Aaron, brandishing that sheet of paper Carson stuffed in his locker.

Carson groans, all anticipation-twisted heart flutters gone in the face of Aaron himself— no, just like that,Carson is  _pissed_.

“What is this supposed to mean?” Aaron demands, moving closer to wave the torn-out piece of notebook paper in Carson’s face.

“Exactly what it says,” Carson shoots back dismissively, settling his glasses back on his nose.

“What the  _fuck_?” Aaron practically yells, and Carson looks up sharply.

“We are not having this discussion here, Aaron.”

“Like hell we are!”

“Uhhh,” Malerie says meekly.  Carson spares her an apologetic glance, having forgotten she was there.  “I’m just gonna…” she gestures weakly over her shoulder and turns to go.

“Bye Malerie, see you tomorrow after school!” Aaron calls, smiling and waving after her.

When he rounds back on Carson, though, his face is stony and  _furious._

“You fucking tell me what this is supposed to mean.  You  _know_  who I am.”

“Do I really?” Carson snaps, feeling his face start to heat, the flush of agitation creeping up his neck and ears.

Aaron is gaping. “We’ve gone to school together since  _kindergarten._ Aaron Blake Christopherson?  A-B Honor Roll, drives a yellow VW Beetle?  Works at Los Taco Loco?  Obsessed with John Hughes and forever disappointed that I will never have a high school experience like Ferris Bueller?”

Carson twists up his mouth in what he hopes looks like derision because he  _will not smile_.

“I’m the one that threw up all over my desk in fourth grade!” he continues, and Carson pulls a face.  “They had to evacuate the classroom while it got cleaned up! I know you heard about that one.  Uh… Unfortunate son of two conservative Christians Republicans and black sheep little brother of two extremely successful older siblings out achieving their dreams.  Legend of Zelda master, forty-two time master, that is …and amateur writer.”  Carson can’t help but smile now.  “That’s all still me, Carson, it’s all still there.”

That’s the problem.  Aaron can still be quirky and individual and not be ostracized in this shitty, shitty school because he’s the  _right kind_  of quirky and individual.  No one questions why he always has excuses for going to parties, why he just kind of disappears whenever it suits him.   _That’s just Aaron_ , he’s heard them say more than once, hipster-cool Aaron who probably gets all his clothes from thrift stores and only ever reads edgy classic novels like  _Brave New World_  and  _Fahrenheit 451_ , that’s him.

Carson will never have that kind of acceptance, not if he tried to fit in and certainly not when he tries to stand out.

“If you’re so sure of yourself why do you hide behind Patty and Sarah?” he explodes, finally saying what he’s been thinking since Aaron walked through the doors of the journalism classroom three weeks ago. 

Aaron looks like he’s been slapped.  “You, of all people, shouldn’t judge me for just doing what I need to do to survive this school and get the hell out.”

“Do you really want to leave here knowing that all you did was lie to everyone?” Carson yells, realizes he’s screaming as he shuts his laptop without thinking, stands up behind his desk.  The dam has broken now, and all that can follow is the flood.  “That you were satisfied with hiding behind whatever people think of you instead of letting anyone see who you really are?”

“No,” Aaron says, and it’s an icy cut that stops Carson cold.  “No, you don’t get to say those things because you have  _no_  idea.  None at all.  What I can’t— What I _don’t_ —” he closes his eyes, breathes deep and quick.  “Maybe you should get to know me before you start judging me like every other shitty person at this school.”  His voice wavers like it could fall apart at any second.  “I th-thought y- _you_  were different, C-Carson.”

The room is so still Carson can feel the adrenaline ebbing from his veins.  Fuck.

“God fucking dammit,” Aaron whispers, rolling his eyes to the ceiling and Carson feels so intrusive, sick to his stomach for even hearing. “I haven’t stuttered in ten years.”

He remembers, then, reaches back past a childhood wrecked with a divorce and a death and the loss of his identity in his own home.  He remembers now, a dark-haired boy so much smaller than the rest who never put his hand up, never got called on in class.  How Carson never had anyone to play with at recess because when kids came up he told them to leave, but this boy always smiled to make up for his lack of words so he never sat on the swings alone.

How Carson always wanted to know his secret but never got up the nerve to ask, how he was so jealous he couldn’t see straight and he wanted to  _hate_  Aaron, but by the third grade Aaron sounded just like everyone else and Carson could never remember what made him want to lash out at Aaron in the first place.

Lash out at this  _boy_  in front of him, impatiently wiping away a traitor tear with his wristband and angling towards the door like he wants to be anywhere but here, stupid piece of paper crumpled in his right hand.

God, he’d forgotten all about Aaron’s stutter.  He can remember every second of his grandpa’s funeral, every teacher he’s ever had, most of his principal’s office trips, but he couldn’t remember something that was obviously still defining Aaron even today.

“Aaron, I—” Carson starts, stops.  For the first time in his life, he has no words.

“Don’t,” Aaron says, garbled and punctuated with a snotty sniff.  He drops the paper in his fist into the trash can as he leaves.

Carson’s all drained out, but instead of feeling better like he thought he would, he just feels empty.

—

Aaron doesn’t show up to journalism class on Thursday or Friday but Carson marks him present all the same, something that must be guilt twisting hot and bitter when he looks at his empty seat.

He wouldn’t know Aaron was in school at all except he’s there in Government class, running in at the last second, slumped against the wall through lecture, and jumping up to be the first one to leave when the bell rings.

Student Council on Thursday is a special kind of torture.  With no actual task at hand in the lull between Homecoming preparations and end-of-the-year club appropriations, Scott spends the meeting loudly recounting the last disastrous rehearsal for the fall musical, though for some reason Nick is the only one who seems to be listening.  Remy tries to go over the agenda but Claire is hanging all over Justin so really Carson is the only one mentally present.

“Why did I even come today,” Carson says darkly.

“You’re telling me,” Remy agrees.

Alright, this is too fucking weird.

“Okay,” Carson calls over the conversation, standing up.  “This is without a doubt the most inane you’ve ever been.  There’s like four things on the agenda  _if that_ , and you idiots can’t shut up long enough for us to get them over with and get the hell out of here.  News flash, kids, the world doesn’t revolve around you.  For that matter, this school doesn’t revolve around you and this Student Council certainly does not revolve around you.  I’d like to go home, so shut up and let’s get done.”

He sits back down, ignoring the four pairs of glaring eyes and Remy’s grateful ones, too.  He’s got a newspaper to format, six articles to edit (or write from scratch, more likely), and still not a clue as to how to approach an extra project for Northwestern.  There’s no time for bullshit,  _especially_ cutesy coupley bullshit.

On Friday he has half a mind to go after Aaron, feet starting to follow him as he disappears into the usual end-of-the-week hallway madness.

_Aaron I don’t know why I—_

_I didn’t mean—_

_Aaron I’m sor—_

He huffs at nothing, frustrated, and turns back for the journalism classroom even though he’s not expecting anything to be in the tray.  He can’t do this here— there’s not much he can say to Aaron, he doesn’t even know  _what_  to say.

_I apologize for forgetting your childhood speech impediment and then bringing it back, and I’m sorry for having a pissing contest over whose life sucks worse and being kind of an asshole, okay really an asshole, so maybe we can just mutually agree that this school sucks and that sucks…?_

The problem is Carson doesn’t  _understand_.  High school sucks for some people and it’s awesome for others, and that’s all there is to it.  But then there’s Aaron, who on the outside looks like he’s got it all together, greeted with smiles and high-fives and fist bumps no matter where he goes, in with the most popular group in school —but then he spends his nights playing video games against the computer and wiping tables in secret at a taco joint.  It  _doesn’t make sense_.  Aaron could have everything— popularity, girlfriend, charmed teachers, an easy ride to graduation but instead he’s… independent, smart, compassionate,  _helpful_ in a way that no one ever seems to be.

It’s fucking  _infuriating_.

He pushes open the door to the journalism classroom and almost doesn’t bother flicking on the light until— there’s paper in the submissions basket.

A lot of paper, in fact, and there’s no way it’s just Malerie’s half-plagiarized movie review.

He pulls out the stack and flips through them slowly, remembering the time someone slipped porn in-between the pages (and does anyone really have boobs that… perky?), but his jaw falls slack for a totally different reason.

It’s… every article he assigned for the week.  Every single one, typed in neat double-space and formatted for copy-and-pasting just like he harps about every Thursday.  He shuffles the stack and a CD falls out, simply labeled  _Chronicle vol. 16 issue 13_.

He freezes comically, glad there’s no one there to see him be so dramatic, but his brain needs just a second to catch up.  He flips through the pages again, but there’s no names on them, just the headlines, just like Carson does when he has to write every article.  But the scrawl on that CD can’t lie.  He’d know that wonky _e_  and perma-capital  _H_  anywhere.

He stuffs the pages carefully into his bag and closes the journalism classroom tightly, knowing there’s only one place to go when his head feels like it’s a tangled mess— the place where  _everyone’s_  head is kind of a tangled mess.

—

The nurses warn him that she’s not having a good day, but he insists on going into her room anyway, hoping that at least the rhythmic clicking of needles will help him sort things out.

She’s not up, though, not even awake.  Grandma’s tucked in from foot to chin, and Carson steps up to the bed, leans his thighs on the mattress.  He won’t stay long, shouldn’t stay long, but….

“Hey Grandma,” Carson says softly, smoothing a hand over her hair.  She doesn’t stir.

He clears his throat a little, looking around.  But people on TV talk to sleeping people all the time— hell, they talk to  _dead people_ — so it must be okay.

“Remember how you asked about, um, Aaron?”  …Fuck, it’s still weird.  He almost leaves, twisting his shoulder strap in his hands.  But she shifts, just a little, tilting her head deep in sleep like she’s waiting for him to go on.  So he does.

“He’s kind of not what I expected.”  And Carson laughs at himself, because that’s not true.  “Okay, maybe he’s exactly what I expected.  And in other ways he just goes so far beyond my expectations that I don’t know how to handle it.  And now I’ve been kind of… well, a total asshole when he didn’t deserve it and then he—” Carson can’t stop laughing now, choking out the words between outbursts— “he writes every single article this week like  _he_  owes  _me_  something.  I don’t get it!”

He catches his breath, reaching into his bag to look at the articles again.  “I don’t get it,” he repeats, quieter now as he starts to read.

There’s Vicki’s weather report, complete with little cliparts of the sun wearing shades.  It makes no sense for the sun to wear something to shield his eyes from himself (fifth-grade Carson didn’t hesitate to point out that exact thing to his teacher regarding her unrealistic bulletin board) but it’s almost…cute.  So he lets it go.

A sports report, a piece on the fall musical, a poll with answers from five (impressively varied) students, and a criticism of the school year schedule, all appropriate lengths with interviews and sources and okay, Carson is duly impressed.  The last one should be Aaron’s student spotlight—

There’s a pink sticky note at the top of the neatly stapled article.

_I wanted to write something a little different this week.  Hope it’s OK._

He peels the note away, sticking it carefully to the back of the article, and reads.

##### Letter to the Editor

##### There aren’t a lot of things I believe in.  Gravity, evolution, physics, science, things backed by years of research and data and trial and error—that, I believe.  Things like god and fate and love, things I can’t touch or quantify or prove, those things I have trouble with.

##### Maybe it’s because it’s science that changed my life, and my sisters’ for that matter, not fate or wishful thinking or my parents’ prayers.  If I hadn’t seen a specialist I wouldn’t be who I am today, never able to hold a normal conversation, let alone stand up in front of a class or an assembly or any kind of crowd.  If my parents hadn’t taken my sister to the doctor she’d be totally deaf by now, the world a silent movie with unclear subtitles.

##### And it’s that skepticism that I’ve had almost since birth— ingrained in me from the age of four, the first time I left the therapist and actually felt like I was getting better, much more so than after the countless blessings and anointings I’d gotten from the church— it’s that skepticism that keeps me so distant from everyone, I think.

##### I can’t take anything for granted or for sure, always questioning friendships and really any kind of affection, sitting back and waiting for someone to break my spirit because I gave them the power to do so.  Letting good things pass me by, ruining the few good things I do have, because they’re always just too good to be true.  I do this, consciously, for some stupid reason—to protect myself? to assume the worst because it’s better wishing for the best?—and I can’t make myself stop.

##### So someone else had to.

##### It’s been awhile since I had anyone to really call a friend, my last “best friend” forgetting I existed as soon as he got a girlfriend, but then I met—no not met, saw—I saw, as if for the first time, someone who kept up their end of the bargain.  And not only that, challenged me to be better than I was, who wasn’t afraid to call me out on my shit but also wanted to make something worth having out of that shit.

##### And what did I do?  Stupid, skeptical me ruined it, as always.  I took the easy way out, to stay with someone who I didn’t particularly like but was never going to stop liking me instead of taking a chance on something that could be everything.  Stupid, stupid me.

##### But hindsight is 20/20, so they say, and I guess when you’ve totally destroyed something it’s a lot easier to rebuild something else bigger and better and stronger in its place.

##### So Carson, I hope you’ll let me do that.  Let us do that, or at least try, because ruining this whatever we have before it even happens is exactly something I would do.  And I don’t want to do that this time.

Carefully he flips the last page, re-affixing the post-it note to its proper place and smoothing the bent corner where the staple is.  He blinks and the page blurs, refocuses, and oh shit he’s  _crying_.

The nurse comes in to tell him visitation hours are over, and he checks his watch— she’s right, it’s after 5.  He nods, looking away because he’s fucking tearing up over a letter (the most genuine, honest letter he’s ever gotten, the  _only_  letter he’s ever gotten), and puts the papers carefully back into his bag.

“Thanks, Grandma,” he says, squeezing her hand.  She would tell him to go talk to Aaron,  _has_  told him to go talk to Aaron, and maybe now he finally knows what to say.

His stomach grumbles as he gets into his car, and all he can think is,  _I could really go for a taco_.

—

The skin-crawling gut-twisting panic doesn’t set in until he pulls into the parking lot of Los Taco Loco, the cheery neon signs already lit in the early autumn dusk.  He can see Aaron’s VW Beetle around the back so everything’s in place, but now just— words.

“Aaron,” Carson says aloud, feeling really silly with his pulse pounding loud in his ears.  “I read your letter, and I think…”  No, probably not best to lead with the letter, especially since he cried over it.

“Aaron,” he tries again, “you were totally ridiculous. Um, I was totally ridiculous, and I’m—” he takes a deep breath— “sorry, I really am, this isn’t exactly my forte, and—”

_Tap tap tap._

Carson yelps and flinches away from the knock on the passenger side window.  It’s Aaron, of course, bright green shirt tonight with hair as spiky as ever.

Carson breathes, tries to calm his heartbeat that’s pounding fearful for more than one reason.

“Carson?” Aaron says, muffled by the glass.  “Uh… hey, what’s up?”

He opens his mouth, thinks better and closes it, calms his nerves, and opens his car door.

“So I’m guessing you found the uh, letter,” Aaron says, sheepish as Carson lets the door close behind him.

“I did,” Carson says evenly, walking around to the back of the car.  He hoists himself onto the trunk and gestures, waiting for Aaron to do the same.

They’re quiet for a second, watching the cars passing by.  Carson knows the ball is in his court now.

A car honks.  “You know they’re going to see,” Carson says before he can stop himself.

“I don’t care,” Aaron replies immediately.  Carson cuts him an incredulous look but he’s resolute, staring at the movie theater across the street.  Or maybe even past that.

“I read your letter,” Carson says finally.  “And all the other articles.  You know you really didn’t have to do that.  Like, at all.”

Aaron hangs his head a little like maybe he’s embarrassed.  “You do it every week.”

Carson can’t argue with that.  “Perks of being the editor-in-chief,” he deadpans, but Aaron doesn’t laugh.  He can see him playing with his fingers like maybe this is a big deal for him too, saying these things out loud.

“You know I’ve never really… apologized to anyone,” Carson says, figuring he might as well put it all out there.

Aaron looks at him finally, eyes wide.  He nods a little.

“But I definitely owe you one.  I’m sorry for saying those things to you, I had absolutely no right to assume that I knew you, I’m just as bad as everyone else in this shitty town.”

“Carson, no,” Aaron launches in, all in one breath, “I’m the one who’s been so stupid and won’t even stand up to fucking Patty and Sarah, I’m the one who’s so afraid to be hated that I’d rather be liked for all the wrong reasons, I’m—”

When he pauses to breathe, Carson cuts in.  “I’m not trying to play the blame game, Aaron, I think I’ve done enough of that.”

“You don’t  _understand_ — this whole thing is my fault,” Aaron moans, putting his head in his hands.  Carson waits.  “If I just hadn’t tried to be all knight in shining armor, so  _stupid_ …”

“…What?”

“The stupid— the fucking— homecoming, god it was  _homecoming_ , you needed someone to pull the float so of course I show up, not even thinking about Patty and Sarah until I pulled in, and I was terrified about blowing my cover but you were so upset and Malerie was so happy to see me and I couldn’t back out.  And what better way to hide than in plain sight?  People don’t ever look past the flashy show so I just thought it was the perfect solution for us both…”

“I’m not understanding.”

Aaron huffs.  “I got called to the principal’s office on Monday because the one smart person in this whole fucking school, whoever it was, figured out that it was my dad’s truck pulling the Writers’ Club float.  And blasting  _Remix to Ignition_  in front of all the dignitaries in the greater Clover area.”

The slow dawning of understanding feels a lot like dread.  “You mean you—”

“I got suspended from school for a day because I played ‘inappropriate music in a school setting,’ yes.  And it just kind of freaked me out a little bit.”

Carson nods dumbly, reeling a little.  No wonder Aaron’s been so distant, he got _punished_  for doing something for Carson, it’s a miracle he didn’t run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.  “I bet you never get in trouble for anything and then this happens, shit Aaron, I should never have asked you—”

“No, Carson no, I didn’t— I didn’t freak out because I got suspended.”

He tilts his head to look at him even though he’s still staring out at the slow-moving ticket line.

“I  _didn’t care_  that I got suspended, that’s the funny thing.  All I could think about was how badass it was, how excited you and Malerie were that it went so well, how everyone sang the chorus together, that was  _so cool_.  The freakout didn’t happen until about midway through Tuesday and then it kind of spilled over into me being a jackass and I’m sorry, Carson.”

He turns to look at Carson for the apology and in the crease of his eyebrows again there’s that earnestness that Carson could never walk away from.  He believes him.

Carson smiles, the apologies done and the knotting guilt eased at last.  “Yeah, you were kind of a jackass.”

Aaron groans loudly.  “I got  _suspended_  for you, Carson, I kind of needed a little bit of time to—”

All Carson hears is that one tiny word:  _for_.

“For me?”  The words are tiny and meek out of Carson’s mouth and he wants to say something loud and scathing to try and erase them but there they are.

Aaron smiles, then, and Carson timidly smiles back, equal parts resigned and relieved, like this was what was going to happen all along.  His joints feel loose, chest weightless of any of that crushing emotion— like it was enormously more difficult to fight it than to let it happen.

“For you,” Aaron repeats, low and happier than he’s sounded all week.

There’s a beat where Carson is smiling and Aaron is smiling and he remembers how Aaron looked when he helped him onto the float, how he had the strangest urge to jump into his arms afterwards and how that might not be so bad…

“Aaron!” someone screeches behind them, and Carson jerks back from where he hadn’t even noticed he was leaning in.

Francesca starts ranting in Spanish, and though Carson doesn’t understand (three semesters of French and there’s not a lot of overlap, or, any overlap really) Aaron certainly does.

“Alright, alright!” he calls back, sliding off the car and waving her away until the door thumps closed behind her.

Carson laughs, can’t help it, laughs into the just-becoming-unbearable chilly air until Aaron smiles back.

“Guess my fifteen minute break is up,” he says, smiling wider as Carson laughs again.

He turns to go, then stops halfway to the door.

“You know what?” he says, fast like he’s just had a thought.  Carson raises his eyebrows.

“We should just— start over. Clean slate.  No assumptions, no bullshit.  Start from scratch.”

Carson mulls it over.  It does sound nice, if woefully idealistic and unattainable.  But Aaron’s smiling like it’s the best plan in the world and Carson wants to believe it is.

“Okay,” he agrees, sliding off the trunk.

“Aaron Christopherson,” Aaron says grandly, presenting his hand with a flourish.

Carson raises his eyebrows again.  “Carson Phillips,” he says as sternly as possible, reaching out to finish the handshake.

“Charmed,” Aaron breathes, words turning into vapor between them and isn’t he just a fucking Disney prince?

The door opens again, bright mariachi music spilling into the quiet parking lot.  “Aaron!”

“That’s my cue,” Aaron says, winking and squeezing Carson’s hand before he turns.

Carson leans a hip against the car door and watches him go.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing consumed my lIFE for three days. Many thanks to Marissa, Grey, and Mandy for holding my hand and slogging me through!

When Carson’s parents got divorced it wasn’t really a surprise-- if anything it was a relief.  A decade of living in a house with two people who clearly despised each other was more than enough for anyone.  Objectively, he wasn’t even upset when his dad left and never bothered to call him again; it felt more like an inevitability than anything, a fact of reality that he had to accept.  He wasn’t the first bad dad in the world and he wouldn’t be the last, but if Carson’s lot in life was only shitty parents and a shittier town, it really would be okay.  He was equipped to handle much worse than that.

His grandpa’s funeral wasn’t as traumatic as it could have been, because Carson pretty much understood death from the second grade when his first pet goldfish died in three days.  Most of the time he fully accepts that he’ll never again have the grandma he grew up with, even if she still looks the same on the outside.

But one thing he can’t possibly understand, what he would never in a million years be equipped to handle, is Aaron Christopherson.

He wakes up at 11:17 on Saturday morning to

 _Aaron Christopherson:  
I’ve found a lot of things accidentally left behind by customers, but dentures might take the cake. _  

It takes a cup of coffee and a glasses-polishing to confirm it, but those are actual words on his cell phone screen.  Mid-way through a second cup of coffee, Carson texts back.

_Full set or just a partial?_

In less than three minutes:

_Aaron Christopherson:  
Oh, the whole shebang.  Floating in a glass of water, no less._

Carson laughs out loud, the sound so out-of-place in his hollow, solemn house that he claps a hand over his mouth to stifle the sound. The soap opera in the living room is cranked ten decibels louder to _eardrum obliterating,_ but that one shout of laughter stays ringing in his ears.

_Did you run away screaming?_

_Aaron Christopherson:  
Francesca had to take care of them for me. _

Burying his mouth in the palm of his left hand, Carson smiles, tapping out a response with his right thumb.

\--

Monday morning feels wobbly and uncertain again, but not quite like before.  Before there was that what’s-going-to-happen sort of black dread in his stomach-- this time it’s kind of light, fluttery.  Anticipation.  He will not fucking say butterflies.

All goes well-- printing and stacking _Chronicle_ s, Aaron’s name on them eleven times each, sneaking in and out of the teachers’ room without incident-- until he gets to his locker before homeroom.  Because of course the universe won’t allow one crummy little Monday to go well.

He gives them two seconds.  He even puts a good _Mississippi_ in-between them.

“Good morning, Patty, Sarah,” Carson announces, dripping thick with grandiose.  “So nice of you to be in the way this fine Monday morning.  Now if you’ll excuse me, your excess of J. Crew, your Lily Puke planners, and your _from the outlet designer store so I can still blow my birthday money from the last four years but maybe find some shred of self-worth in the process_ \--spoiler alert, you won’t-- purses are in the way of my locker.  Move.”

Patty rolls her eyes.  “No need to be so dramatic, Pencil Boy.  And it’s a free country, so we can stand wherever we want.”

He grits his teeth and tries to breathe normally.  If it wasn’t for his deal with Aaron he would already be laying into them.  “Move.  Please.”

Sarah pipes in, flipping her hair. “Make us.”

And he can’t walk away, mostly because it would be giving in and also because if he doesn’t bring something to do to homeroom he’ll have to listen to the cheerleaders in the back discuss which boys remind them the most of the shirtless werewolf in Twilight. Again.

Carson almost volunteered for discussion the guy he sat behind in Spanish last year before he remembered that Danny graduated.  And also that he was contributing to a conversation about probably the single worst tragedy to happen to young adult fiction.

He _really_ needed something to do in homeroom.

“Alright look, I didn’t want to bring up seventh grade P.E., but if I have to, I will.”

Both of their horrified gasps are cut off when a fourth person joins them.  It’s not a hand slammed against a locker or even a word, just a step forward and a hand tugging a wristband and a warm sort of something that radiates from Carson’s right side all the way through to his toes.

“What’s going on, guys?” Aaron says, carefully casual.  Carson would bet his last pencil lead that he’s been listening in the entire time.

“Nothing!” Patty insists, just as Carson says, “Some form of social protest, I’m sure.”

For some reason he can’t quite meet Aaron’s eye as he looks between them, instead glaring at Patty and Sarah’s overly innocent expressions.

“Alright, here’s how it is,” Aaron announces, shifting closer to Carson, leaning into the middle of their loose circle like he’s telling a secret.  Carson forgets to be offended by him leaping into the conversation, too curious about where it will go.  He wonders if Aaron is always like this, if he has a knight in shining armor complex, rescuing baby birds and returning lost wallets.

“Patty, Sarah, you know you’re my best girls,” Aaron says, and Carson rolls his eyes at the vintage grandeur.  Sarah actually blushes, too.  “And, because you are,” he continues, “you can understand this: Carson and I are cool.”

That phrase means literally nothing to Carson, and he bats it around in his head three times trying to make sense of it.  He didn’t say _Carson_ was cool, which was to be expected, but he said that he and Carson are cool.  They’re _cool_.

Whatever the fuck that means.

Patty huffs a little and Sarah just looks confused (nothing new there) but they seem to understand this weird exchange of Popular Kid language.  “Fine, whatever,” she says eventually, adjusting her heinously huge purse.  Carson wonders if she helps smuggle Mexican children across the border.  “Come on Sarah, I need to check my lipstick before homeroom.”

They saunter off and Carson lunges forward to his locker, glancing at his watch-- thankfully, he should still make it to his classroom before the tardy bell rings.

A pointed throat clearing prefaces Carson shutting his locker, and there’s Aaron leaning against the neighboring door, smiling smug as ever.  “Well?” he says expectantly.  Carson has a sudden clear vision of a puppy wagging it’s tail, looking for praise.

“You know you didn’t have to do that,” Carson says, the edge of his words sharper than he intended, but Aaron takes it in stride.

He shrugs.  “I know I didn’t.  I wanted to.”

He smiles at Carson like he knows he’s left him without a reply, which Carson will never admit is true, and steps aside.  “Shall we?”

Mindlessly Carson walks to homeroom, fighting the urge to look at the floor when everyone they pass is staring at them.  Some are harmlessly curious, while a group of tenth grade girls are looking at Carson like they want to _kill_ him.

“What are you doing?” Carson hisses when Aaron doesn’t break off down the languages hall to his own classroom.

“Walking you to homeroom,” he says simply, inflecting like it’s _Carson_ that’s lost his mind.

He stands in front of Mrs. Monarch’s door, smiling benignly when Carson tries to edge around him.

Puppy wants his treat.

Carson blows his bangs up in frustration, crossing his arms.  Aaron does too, raising his eyebrows expectantly.  He can see Mrs. Monarch behind Aaron, staring amusedly.

Carson drops his arms.  “Thank you,” he says, and the conviction of his own words makes him stagger a bit.  Aaron looks floored.

He recovers, leaning in with that old mischievous smile.  “You’re welcome, Carson,” he replies, a ghost of a wink as he slips past, off to his own homeroom at last.

It takes a second for Carson to recover but he does, shifting his shoulder bag and squaring his shoulders to take his seat.  He ignores Mrs. Monarch’s annoyingly knowing smile, scowling at her when she calls roll.  If she thought she knew anything, she was sorely mistaken.  As if there was anything _to_ know.

\---

Nothing feels particularly different until that afternoon at Student Council, when Carson looks up from the heavily scratched off and doodled-on list of ideas for an extra project for Northwestern (still no conclusive direction, and he can feel the panic setting in) because the room fell silent.  And everyone was staring at him.

“What?” he says, hating himself for sounding so defensive.  He was sure he hadn’t insulted any of them yet, but that could change at any moment if they didn’t stop staring.

They all look at each other, like they’re daring someone to talk first.  Did he have Sharpie on his face again?

“What’s going on with you and Aaron Christopherson?” Claire Mathews says, so directly it just confuses him all over again.

“What? What does _that_ have to do with appointing a new telephone chair?”

“Oh stop playing games Carson, tell us what you have on him,” Scott starts in, thumping his fist on the table.

“Okay first of all, this is not Law & Order, or any sort of interrogation for that matter, so calm down on the theatrics.  I know that’s hard for you, but you can do it.  Second of all, not that it is _any_ of your business, not in this or any other universe, but why the fuck do you care?  None of you are even friends with Aaron.”

Justin jumps in then, saying, “Popular kids stick together.”

Carson pointedly closes his notebook and stands, swinging his bag.  “Okay, you’re all fucking crazy.  None of you give a shit about me, and I’m pretty sure you don’t give a shit about Aaron, so find another hobby, okay?  Go kick around some freshman or, I don’t know, _get a life_.”

It doesn’t hit him until he’s halfway to Clover Senior Center and going way too fast on the sleepy roads that apparently, being associated with Aaron meant things were going to be different.  He wasn’t sure if it was for the better.

\---

Aaron’s actually on time for Writer’s Club on Wednesday, walking in as Carson’s rummaging through his bag for a pen.

“Oh good, you’re here.  We need to talk,” Carson says, wincing at the awful cliché.

Aaron hums, looking down at the desk instead of at Carson.  “Okay, sure.  Hey what’s this?” he snatches up the list of project ideas, barely legible now through the pen-darkened margins.

Carson sighs distractedly.  He had a _plan_ , he had things he needed to say to Aaron, to try and understand.  “I’m trying to get into Northwestern but Mrs. Sharpton thinks my resume isn’t enough, that I need to submit an extra project.”

“Oh, I applied there,” Aaron says, so breezily Carson almost misses it.  “Then again, I applied at pretty much every big college with the major I want that’s at least a plane ride away.  Anything to get far, far away from Clover.”

“Wait, you applied to Northwestern?” Carson repeats, dumbfounded.

“Well yeah.  And Boston University, George Washington, University of Alabama in Birmingham… six schools in all.”

The panic over the extra project turns to knotted dread.  “I have to get into Northwestern,” Carson says, still adamant, but it almost upturns into a question at the end.

“Nothing wrong with having a backup plan,” Aaron shrugs, tilting the scribbled page up to the light to try and discern the words.

“Or five,” Carson adds dismally.  Should he have a backup plan?  There was no other option for him than Northwestern, there _couldn’t_ be. 

But the early acceptance deadline was coming up fast, like _single-digit number of days_ fast, and still no word…

“Oh god, I need a backup plan, don’t I?” Carson moans, running a hand over his face and sitting down hard in the chair.  It rolls back with the impact and he doesn’t even flinch when his head thunks into the wall.  “Fuck!”

“There’s still plenty of time,” Aaron says, slow and soothing like Carson’s a wild animal he’s trying to approach.  “Most admissions deadlines aren’t until December first.  But you do have to get your transcript and stuff sent in.”

Carson grunts at him, not caring that he was acting like a child.  Northwestern has always been a part of the dream, step one to his future, the foundation upon which all his future success would be built.  It wouldn’t be the same if it was UCLA or lord forbid Clover Community College on his resume, it had to be Northwestern, it _had_ to be.  That was the plan.

He cracks an eye open, and Aaron’s moved to the chalkboard now, squinting at Carson’s marked-up list and transcribing it to the board.

Then again, plans change.

“What is this word supposed to be?  Is this a C or an O?”

“What does it matter? It might as well just say _you’re not getting in_ ,” Carson whines, knowing full well he’s being ridiculous.

“Carson, please.  You’ve been on the honor roll your whole life, you’ve been the editor of the school newspaper for two years and the president of the Writer’s Club for two, I’m sure your SAT score was hundreds of points above mine and you’ve got more determination in your pinky finger than I could ever hope to have in a lifetime.  You’re going to get in anywhere you set your mind to.”

Carson tilts his head incredulously, raising an eyebrow.  He doesn’t know whether to be flattered or suspicious.  Maybe both.

“What?” Aaron says guardedly, and Carson decides not to point out that he’s blushing.  “You will.  But there’s nothing wrong with having options.”

Carson wonders how many times he can question what the hell he’s gotten himself into before he gets some kind of answer.

“Now,” Aaron says loudly, all business now, glowing pink face smoothed, “the question is not if _you_ can write something, it’s if we can find other people to write something.”

“We?” Carson asks faintly, trying to catch up.  Apparently, Aaron’s knight streak is continuing.

He gets ignored.  “I could try and pull some strings, but I’m not really powerful over a large group of people.  At least, not a motivated group.  We need an incentive, something that will make people want to write too.  I could throw a party and the ticket to enter could be a short story or something?”

Carson shakes his head, thinking briefly of pinching himself, too.  “Aaron, what the fuck-- this is not your project, this is mine.  It isn’t your future on the line, it’s mine.”  He stands up, the heat of frustration spilling over.  “I’ve been trying to come up with a solution for this for _weeks_ now and there is none.  There’s no way I can do any of those on my own, and there’s no way I can find anyone to help me, either.  I’m just going to get Principal Gifford to write me another recommendation letter and set up a shrine to Odin or something.  There’s nothing I can do, and there’s certainly nothing you can do.  _I don’t need your help_.”

He’s breathing rough like he ran a marathon and his tone basically said _please fuck off_ but Aaron didn’t move an inch, holding two pieces of snapped chalk in his hand.

“Has anyone ever offered to help you before, Carson?”

“Of course not, why would they?”  He never even let anyone get close enough that they would dare do so.  He learned long ago that if he wanted something done right he needed to do it himself, and if he wanted something done right the first time he shouldn’t even trust another person to try.

“I can’t speak for anybody else, but I want to help you.  So I’m going to, whether you like it or not.  I want you to get into that school, and I’m going to help you do it.”

Carson eyes him suspiciously.  Nothing about Aaron made sense, and asking for clarification apparently only brought a whole host of philosophical questions.  He’s still doing Aaron a huge favor, letting him be in the Writer’s Club to save him from suspension when all he does is hum and click his pen and ask 20 questions, and it makes sense to have Aaron do something for him in return.  And if it can help his chances of getting into Northwestern…

“Plus,” Aaron says, all in a rush like he’d been holding his breath, “if I do half the work you can put my name on the project, too, and then we’ll both be padding our resume.  Really, this is selfish.”

“Fine,” Carson grits out, arms crossed tightly.  “Fine, Aaron, I will allow you to assist me.  But you do what I tell you to do, and don’t try to take it upon yourself to do anything else you think is helpful, because it’s probably not.”

“Yes sir,” Aaron says, right back to teasing, giving a mock salute, handing over the broken chalk and grinning like he won the lottery.

Carson huffs and just manages to curb the smile tugging insistently at the corners of his mouth.

\---

On Friday afternoon, he tips the submission box emblazoned with _Clover High Literary Magazine_ onto the front desk of the journalism classroom, Aaron bouncing on his toes across from him.

“Looks like... gum wrappers, math homework, and a vandalized Writer’s Club flyer.”

“Maybe it’s an artistic statement?” Aaron offers, picking up the flyer.  “The structure of this insult is almost poetic.”

“Is it about my supposed inability to see any color other than blue?”

“Uh, no, but they did inadvertently half-rhyme _loser_ with _poser_ , so maybe you are inspiring people to write after all!”

Carson grimaces, sweeping it all into the trash can.  “I don’t know what I expected, honestly.”

“So, Plan B it is?”

Wary but thoroughly put-out, Carson concedes.  “Plan B it is.”

\---

Plan B involves a lot more writing but much fewer outside contributions.  Zero outside contributions, actually.  They’ll still have to interview students and teachers, but no one else will have to write a thing.

Just Wednesdays together in Writer’s Club turns into almost every day after school, planning and dividing to conquer, playing off one another and asking each other questions and talking layout and content.

They talk about other things, too, more things than Carson thought there were to talk about with someone his own age.  Aaron’s more than happy to fill their breaks from working with long anecdotes about shifts at work, about his extended family (Hispanic on his mother’s side, and not Mexican, but Puerto Rican-- Aaron’s Uncle Eric was just an enterprising man), about the new video game he’s playing or a video he saw on YouTube.  Carson even surprises himself when the breaks get longer and longer because he’s telling stories too, about the terribly bratty child he was, about his grandmother sneaking him treats and toys when his mom said no, about how things have so drastically changed over the years.

He even tells Aaron the story of the divorce and everything that unwound after it, one crisp Friday afternoon with the sun setting earlier than they’re used to, leaned against their cars parked side-by-side.  Carson can’t remember a time when he was reluctant to stop talking to someone, but with Aaron he’s somehow always wishing they had another ten minutes.

Because Aaron _understands_.  Even when he can’t relate or empathize, he always listens carefully, nods and comments in all the right places, tells Carson exactly what he didn’t know he needed to hear-- that it’s not his fault, it will turn out okay, it’s just temporary.

Aaron talks about the past and the present and the future all at the same time and sometimes all in the same tense, because for him, they’re all in reach.  He’s at peace with his past and looking forward to the future; he’s not trapped like Carson is, not entangled in the snare of a suffocating family and disheartening expectations, a past he would give anything to change and a future that seems laughable to everyone else.  Aaron’s not _fighting_ to get there, he stands confident in the knowledge that he just _will_.

For half a second Carson is mind-numbingly jealous, just a kid on the playground again, but he can’t stay that way when Aaron is there practically waving pom poms in his face, telling him that he can have that, too.  Carson’s never had a single person to believe in him, and Aaron has, and maybe that’s made all the difference.  Aaron must think it did, because he seems to be doing everything in his power to make up for the disparity.

Most days they stay until five o’clock, sometimes later until the janitor has to ask them to leave so he can lock the doors, sometimes only a little while when Aaron has an early shift or an appointment and Carson can only force himself to work in the too-empty too-quiet classroom for a half-hour at the most.

They avoid talking about Patty and Sarah, and really anyone at school.  At first it was conscious, but then it didn’t matter, with the building and people they were surrounded by being the last topic they wanted to breach.  Carson knows Aaron still hangs out with them, but as they’ve significantly backed off on their mean girl antics he can’t be bothered with them, usually.

They’re nearly finished on the project, the only things left squabbling good-naturedly over picture placement and deciding how big their names should be and what headlines should go on the cover.  The air outside is just at the state of no turning back, when there’s no reason to wistfully keep short sleeved shirts in drawers anymore, and Carson and Aaron spend long afternoons hiding from the chill, huddled together at a computer screen.

At 4:30, Aaron stands up.  “Ah, sorry, I promised Sarah and Patty I would meet them for frozen yogurt at five.  Patty tried to convince me to go shopping with her and then Sarah wanted to talk me into manicures, so really, this was the best choice.”

It’s a joke, and Carson knows Aaron expects him to laugh, but something about it bristles his fur.  He’s learned a lot about Aaron after so many afternoons together, about the way he wants to help people and the way he often explains the world through metaphors and the way his eyes disappear when he laughs deep from his belly.  And nothing about that lines up with what Carson sees in his friendship with Patty and Sarah.

Aaron pulls on his jacket and Carson watches grumpily, unable to talk himself out of asking, “Why don’t you just choose one?”  He huffs at Aaron’s bewildered look.  “Patty and Sarah, I mean.  If you just agreed to date one, wouldn’t they both get off your back?”

Strangely, Aaron shakes his head and laughs without a trace of humor.  “Um, I don’t think that’s going to happen, Carson.”

“Why?  Because you’d rather have double the attention?”

He zips the pockets of his backpack firmly.  “Because I’m gay.”

And that is, quite certainly, the last thing Carson expected to hear.  “Oh.”

Aaron shifts, looking uncomfortable, and Carson feels like the shittiest friend in the world.  He should be doing something, saying something to show that it doesn’t change who Aaron is in his eyes, but that might be a bit of a lie.  Because Aaron being gay opens up a whole figurative filled-to-bursting cupboard door that Carson had been quite determinedly leaning on for over a week.

Or, if he’s going to be brutally honest with himself, quite a bit longer than that.

“I’m sorry I’m being weird,” Carson says finally, “I don’t care, I mean, I _do_ care, um, I just, didn’t know.  I-- I guess I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Yeah,” Aaron says, rubbing the back of his neck like Carson knows means he’s embarrassed, which is. Odd.  “I’ve actually never told anyone at school or anything, just my older sister.  I know who I am, but I don’t really care for any of these people I’ll never see again to judge me based on something they’ve only so far learned about through their parents’ dinner table hate speech.  But with you... I, um, I just thought you knew?  I thought it was kind of implied.  You know with the, uh, letter.”

“The letter,” Carson says slowly, and in a true eureka moment-- one for the ages, really-- a whole lot of things suddenly make much more sense.  “Oh, yes, the letter,” Carson says, sounding a lot more confident and collected than he feels.  “Of course, yes.  I, uh, I get that, now.  Should have sooner, I’m guessing.”

“Y-yeah,” Aaron says, wincing a little at the barely-there stutter.  “I’m just gonna, I gotta get going.  I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow,” Carson echoes, trying to smile as Aaron strides quickly for the door, closing it behind him with an echoing bang.

He leans hard against the desk, moving it a couple inches until he slaps his hands down for support.

“ _Fuck.”_

\---

He doesn’t see Aaron the next day, because it’s Thanksgiving break.  Carson remembers not ten minutes after Aaron walks out the door to the journalism classroom, and he groans—whether in relief or frustration, he doesn’t even know.

There’s a text waiting for him, though, when he opens his eyes at 8:18 on Wednesday.  Many texts.

_Aaron Christopherson:_

_6:42: What I should have said yesterday was “have a good thanksgiving break!” so better late than never, right?  My cousins in Portland are already sending me slightly creepy Facebook wall posts.  Should I fear for my life for the next four nights?_

_7:14: Should I be apologizing? Working on my transfer application?  I mean, I know you won’t tell anyone because I asked you not to, but you’re not like freaked out or anything, right?_

_7:29: Because I think you might be my best friend.  No, I know you are.  And if you never want to talk to me again, I wouldn’t blame you.  I know it’s probably really weird now…_

_7:56: Fuck, I’m really stupid.  I’m gonna stop texting you I swear._

Carson rubs the crust from his eyes and sits up, squints at his phone and tries to think clearly enough to draft a text.

_Sleep with one eye open, extended family can never be trusted.  No, Aaron, *I’m* sorry for being weird, you don’t have to apologize for anything.  You just caught me a little off guard for a lot of reasons, and I was never good at quick recovery.  As always, your secrets are safe with me._

He waits a little, types out another message while he sips coffee and hovers his thumb over the send button uncertainly before he takes a deep breath and taps it.

_I’m pretty sure you’re my best friend too.  Have a great Thanksgiving break._

He doesn’t get a reply until he’s fully settled in, nestled among pillows in the softest part of the plasticy hospital-standard couch in his grandmother’s room.

_Aaron Christopherson:_

_:)_

Carson smiles absently at his phone until the nurse checking Grandma’s blood sugar asks him curiously what he’s grinning so hard at.  He shoves it deep into his bag to forget about it.

He brought his laptop, a pen, his battered notebook, and stuck near the front between two pages, Aaron’s letter.  It was wedged there before he left from school the Friday he found it in the submissions basket, and it hasn’t left since.  It wasn’t that Carson wanted to forget about it, it’s that he’d dismissed it, skimmed over anything that couldn’t possibly mean what he thought it did, not even considered things he had to be reading into.  Or, maybe not.

After a half-hour of fiddling with the cover of their extra project, aligning text and then rearranging it and aligning it all over again, he takes the notebook out of his bag and puts it on the couch next to him.  Another hour of YouTube videos (the channel Aaron loves so much and talked him into watching) choking back laughter and turning down the volume so the nurses won’t hear the swear words through his ear buds, and Carson takes out the letter and puts in on the arm of the couch.

He gets lunch and he comes back and this time Grandma is awake, propped up in the movable bed and knitting, like always.

“What’s that?” Carson asks her, more to stall than anything.  The letter is sitting where he left it, folded innocuously into thirds.  The sight of it makes him want to puke.

“It’s a scarf,” she replies, holding it up to show him.  It’s huge, and she must realize, because she says “Well, a blanket scarf.  A scarf blanket.”

“Who is it for?” he stalls again, picking up the letter absently and turning it over in his hands.

“My grandson,” she replies, and no matter how innocently it’s said, it always punches Carson in the gut.  He wants to yell _that’s me_ , has wanted to for years now, but it won’t do any good and he knows it.  He swallows instead, reflexive.

“He’s a lot younger than you,” she continues, “just starting middle school next year.”

“Oh,” Carson says, playing along.  “What if he was, say, turning 18 and getting ready to leave home and possibly wanting to connect with another human being for pretty much the first time, um, ever? Would you have anything to say?  Advice to give?”

He waits, not even hoping that the shot in the dark will land.

“Have I told you about the day we found out the war was over?”

Goose egg.

“Thanks, Grandma,” he mutters as he sits heavily on the couch with a sigh, unfolding the letter.

The first time he re-reads it, he cries again, forgetting in the time that had passed just how raw it was.  The second time he re-reads it, he smiles, appreciating how Aaron has his own particular way with words, how this is just one piece of the Aaron he knows so well, now.

The third time, he’s got it half-memorized and there’s something like certainty creeping up through his skin, pulsing in his wrists, settling pleasant weight on his shoulders.  The letter was a question, an invitation, and he finally has the answer.

“I really like Aaron,” he says out loud, fold-creased paper hanging loose from one hand, arm of the couch gripped tight in the other.  There it is, the sweaty palms and avoided glances and warm fluttery lightness all put into four words.

“Well then,” Grandma says, looking up from the daytime drama on the ceiling-mounted television set.  “Better tell her, not me.”

Carson doesn’t waste breath trying to correct her, slipping the letter back into his notebook on autopilot, not even bothering to get something else out to work on.  He likes Aaron, and the world is spinning on.

\--

Thanksgiving and Christmas used to be the only times his family ever acted like one.  Carson’s mom would dress him up in a too-stiff outfit with the tags still on it,  his grandma and grandpa would come over and bring casseroles and his parents wouldn’t say a single mean word to one another for the whole day.

It’s down to just Carson and his mother, now, and it’s a testament to old tradition that she doesn’t touch wine until after 2 pm, showers and dresses, and actually goes with him to the senior center to visit Grandma and eat bland turkey and watery dressing in the cafeteria with other sad, small, drawn-in families.  It’s immensely depressing, being there surrounded by so many people that would rather be anywhere else, people not seeing what’s in front of them, living in years past to make the present more bearable.  He wraps his coat twice as tight around himself when they walk back out the front doors, and not just to block out the cutting wind.

Dinner is a new tradition now, born out of small numbers and Carson’s inability to cook anything that’s not a breakfast food-- they order enough Chinese for eight people and settle down at the table, surrounded by cartons and squabbling over who gets what fortune cookie.

He forgets, in his desperation to leave this house, in all the bleak memories it holds, he forgets that there’s good, too.  His phone lights up with a text, and Aaron’s name makes him smile-- maybe there’s good everywhere, if he can just keep looking for it.

He’s transitioning from General Tso’s to Lo Mein when he decides to just go for it, letting the words he’s kept locked right under his tongue all day spill out to his empty carton.

“Mom-- I like someone.”

Sheryl stops in the middle of a rant that Carson had only heard the words “pharmacy” and “medicine” and decided to mostly tuned out.

“Oh? You-- you do?”

“Um, yes.”  He squeezes his eyes shut, takes a steadying breath.  “It’s a boy.”

He can hear his heartbeat in his ears as he looks up slowly, opening one eye at a time.  Her face is carefully devoid of emotion, which isn’t the best case scenario, but it’s not bad.

“So does that mean... do you only like boys? Or...?”

“I don’t know? I’ve been doing a lot of googling and I still didn’t figure it out.  I don’t want to rule out girls forever or anything, and it’s not like there’s any options in this town that would help me figure it out.  So for right now, it’s just that.  I like a guy.”

“Okay,” Sheryl says, and Carson suspects she’s putting on a good face for him.  He knew there had to be some kind of mothering instinct left, when it wasn’t dulled by alcohol.  “Okay, Carson, that’s just fine.  I hope I get to meet him soon.”

Carson lets her slip back into the story, which now included her new doctor, tapping out under the table a reply to Aaron.

Really, it had gone as well as it could have.  He didn’t even particularly want to tell her, it had just felt important that he did.  It felt _solid_ , now that he wasn’t the only person who knew.  Carson always felt safe in truths and absolutes, and every second the way he felt about Aaron was getting closer to fact.

He thinks he’s in the clear, that he’s avoided the awkwardness of the situation altogether, until she saunters out of the kitchen where Carson is putting away leftovers, full wine glass in hand, musing, “Next time I go to the doctor I’ll see what kind of pamphlets they have, you know you can never be too safe Carson, even if there’s no chance of pregnancy scare...”

_“Mom!”_

_\---_

On Friday and Saturday he finds himself with nothing to do, a laptop, and a high-speed internet connection.

He thinks about jacking off, but just a tentative google search of “gay porn” makes him want to slam his computer shut.  Carson has no problem finding people attractive, it’s when they open their mouths that the allure tends to disappear-- he’s much more content to just focus on the way touching himself feels, not a hazy fantasy of someone else doing so.  Boy or girl, a hand is a hand and a mouth is a mouth and there’s just not enough appeal in fantasizing that the hand on his dick belongs to anyone but him.

His therapist from the divorce did say he had narcissism issues.

Instead, he googles “top journalism programs in U.S. universities.”  And then he googles every variation of the phrase, starting a list on a word document.  He goes into every university website, writing down numbers, looking at pictures, researching cities and looking at scholarships.

And, at three in the morning on Sunday, he clicks “Apply Online Now!” on three different sites, arranging the tabs carefully to fill out when he wakes up in the early afternoon.

\---

It’s amazing what a difference forced trust and a few weeks of compulsory interaction can make.  Philosophically, Carson wonders what it would be like if Aaron had never asked him for help, if he hadn’t said yes, if either one of them had made a different decision along the way.  It’s almost impossible to think about, not when Aaron’s right across the room, helping Vicki plan her weekly article and throwing little smiles every time he glances up and Carson’s still watching.

Aaron doesn’t walk around offering help, they ask him for it-- Malerie impatient for his opinion on her latest rewrite and Emilio having him check his grammar and spelling.  The room is completely different from the beginning of the school year, the dynamic much more relaxed, willing, cooperative.  Carson doesn’t even think to join in or speak up, content with watching Aaron work, stupid with affection, bursting with pride at how he’s managed to transform the whole staff with just a willingness to work.

He would be jealous (and there are twinges once in awhile) if he didn’t feel total ownership over Aaron’s presence in the room, the too willing-to-please eagerness that was infecting the group.  It’s intoxicating, sort of, knowing that Carson can be the reason someone is willing to step outside their comfort zone, that he could be worth changing an entire social identity for.  Intoxicating and strange, heady and unfathomable, flattering and impossible, but when Aaron’s eyes meet his, all sincere clear emotion, it starts to make sense.

Malerie bows out of Writer’s Club suspiciously early, even for her.  Carson gives her a look that she ignores, singing her farewells down the hallway.

Two hours later their project is declared officially finished, a 32-page memoire magazine in glossy full color and semi-trained graphic design, thanks to Aaron’s predisposition for easily figuring out anything electronic. It’s a record of their joint time in Clover, the good, bad, and ugly-- nameless recounts of embarrassing stories and social disasters, lists of popular bands and blockbuster movies, long articles on local oddities and scandals.  It’s fittingly reflective of the experiences that went into creating it, how it’s not close to perfect but still full of personality and grit and humor found in the bleakest of places.  It’s them, really, printed and bound in 32 pages as much as two people can be.

Aaron gets the settings right to print a dummy copy on computer paper, just so they can see it.  The publishing company made them print a minimum of 50, and Carson’s not sure what they’ll do with the extras (probably give them to the homeless for kindling) but just holding the matte, loose leaf fruit of their labor kind of makes him want to cry.

“I’m really glad we did this,” Aaron says, smiling up at him from the computer chair where he’s finalizing the format, attaching it to an email.

Carson looks down at the stack of papers in his hands, ink smeared and streaked and off-color from the battered journalism room printer, and knows he’s holding the first group project he’s ever actually done just his share, and nothing more.  The first project he’s trusted someone to uphold their end of the bargain.

“I don’t have a letter,” Carson says, staring at the way his and Aaron’s names are listed, alphabetically, Aaron’s aligned over his, sixteen point Garamond.

“Hm?” Aaron says, swiveling in the computer chair, eyebrows raised politely.  “What was that?”

“I don’t have a letter,” he starts again, “or anything, really... I’m afraid I’m not really sure what the protocol is on any of this.  I don’t have a letter or even a good speech or anything, I’m sorry, but I wanted you to know that I think I feel the same way.”

Aaron blinks, mouth half-open.  “You... you think you do?”

Carson smiles from behind his glasses, shrugs a little.  “I know I do.”

Aaron’s mouth twitches and he half gets up, sits back down.  “So what happens now? Where do we go from here?”

“That’s the part I’m a bit lost on,” Carson admits, looking down at his shoes again.  There were so many variables, many more things that could go wrong than go right.  It would be a huge risk for both of them on every level, except-- if Aaron felt half as certain about Carson as Carson did about him...

Aaron nods.  “I think we can work with that.”

\---

Carson stays later than usual on Friday by himself, waving off Aaron’s apologies when his mom calls to get him to pick something up on his way home.  He wants to stay late so that he can type in edited articles from the week and get a rough layout of the _Chronicle_ so he’ll have more of his weekend available.

Because apparently having a boy that likes him means doing things together on the weekends, making plans that Carson isn’t sure if he should call dates or not.  The word _date_ makes him laugh out loud, nervous and still in disbelief because these things just _don’t happen_ to him.  He shouldn’t be wondering if “hanging out” is a codeword for date, or thinking about what he should wear, or glancing at his phone every two seconds even though he knows fully well it hasn’t buzzed yet.

There’s something about being caught in the in-between, where Aaron knows, and Carson knows, and Aaron knows that Carson knows, where a smile can be friendly one second and something so much _more_ the next.  He wonders twenty times a day if he should give in and go forward, if he should panic and turn back.  Sometimes it feels like there isn’t any turning back, when he’s managed to get Aaron to laugh loud and full with his head thrown back, and all Carson wants to do is make it happen again.

He’s packing up his laptop when the ancient P.A. system has a burst of static and then a flat voice announces, _Student Council meeting in the library_.

Carson frowns, swinging his bag with so much force it almost knocks him over.  Student Council meetings were only supposed to be once a week except during homecoming preparations.  Certainly not now, at the last few days of school before Christmas break.

Scowling the whole way, Carson marches to the library, more irritated with every step he takes.  There was no way this was a coincidence, that they had an irregularly scheduled meeting and he didn’t know.  …Then again, when was the last time he _went_ to a Student Council meeting?

His skin is prickling with anger and creeping, knowing dread by the time he walks in the door.  They’re all there, all shocked to see him, and he sits down, trying to act calm.

“What’s up?” Carson says, too shaky to be nonchalant.

Claire straightens, defense written in every line of her body.  “Nice of you to join us, Mr. Phillips.  Now, in the matter of club funding next semester, we’ve only got to make one vote to approve the entire proposal.  All those in favor?”

“Wait, what are we voting on?” Carson asks insistently as hands go up on all sides.

Claire folds her hands primly.  “If you had been so inclined to actually show up for anything, Carson, you would know that Principal Gifford had us decide which student activities will get a budget next semester because funding got cut by 25%.  No funding, no club.”

“What clubs did you cut,” Carson says carefully, disdain in every syllable, gripping the table so tight his fingertips are numb.

“That’s quorum,” Nicholas says with finality, cold smile that’s nothing more than a soulless curling of his lips.  “Sorry about your newspaper, Carson.  And your writer’s club too.”

“You _can’t do this_ ,” Carson stands to half-yell, fists by his sides, fingernails carving angry half-moon indentations.

“Looks like we just did,” Remy says, sugary sweet as she hammers the last nail in the coffin.

\---

_I can’t hang out tonight.  Maybe not tomorrow either.  I’m really sorry, please believe that I am._

Are you okay? Do you need me to call?  I can come over?

_Not now. Maybe I can explain later but just not now._

Okay.

_Sorry._

\---

He wonders, when his room is dark and his phone is off and it’s so late he can think without feeling guilty for once, Carson wonders how long it’ll take Aaron to stop texting, to stop talking to him.  It’s no question that Sarah and Patty would swoop in as soon as they heard the news, that the tentative team Aaron has sewn together will quickly unravel, and Carson will be even more alone than before, knowing what he’s missing.

It’s his future, and it’s as dark as the new moon night outside.

He leaves his phone off.

\---

Skipping school on Monday sounds inviting until he realizes that a day home means a day stuck with his mother and eight hours of daytime TV.  He waits until the bell for third period has rung and slips in, signing illness as his excuse in the office.

Getting to know so much about Aaron in the last few weeks meant Carson was excellent at avoiding him, slipping into the second-floor corner bathroom over lunch and taking the back way to fifth period to stay away from Aaron’s locker. 

He’s the last one into Economics, stuck in the front-left desk and far enough away that Sarah and Patty’s whispers are almost totally tuned-out.

It would have all been successful if he hadn’t parked in the same spot he does every day on instinct, and Aaron knew exactly where that was.

“Carson!”

“ _Fuck,_ ” Carson mutters, throwing his shoulder bag into his passenger seat.

“Carson, hello?  Remember me?  The person you’ve been avoiding for three days?  I must have sent you fifty texts, do you _know--”_

“Yes, Aaron, because everything is always all about you,” Carson says flatly, slamming the door shut.

“Carson, _what is wrong?”_

Really, Carson doesn’t know why he thought he could outrun Aaron.

“It’s my fault, it’s all my _fault_ and if I’d only, if I hadn’t--”

“What happened?” Aaron says evenly.

“The Student Council-- they cut the funding for the _Chronicle_.  And for the Writer’s Club,” Carson says miserably, leaning limp against his passenger side door.

 _“Why?”_ Aaron is so close Carson can feel his breath hot on his cheeks, the vibration of the sound waves.  The raw, fierce concern that makes his chest ache.

“Because they _could_.  they hate me, Aaron.  Because everyone in this school hates me.  Because anyone here will take any opportunity they can find to cut me down to size, because it’s _fun_ for them.  I don’t know why, but they did.”

“Not everyone hates you, Carson,” Aaron half-whispers, and it’s all Carson can do to not collapse against him with dead weight, resting his head on Aaron’s shoulder with a small sob he can’t keep down.

And in the parking lot of Clover High School, surrounded by cars and two hundred of their classmates, Carson lets Aaron hold him.

\---

The last days of school before a big break are always wasted, with teachers showing movies instead of teaching, grading papers instead of giving instruction.  Letting their kids run wild with the faint taste of freedom.

Carson has never known what to do with himself when those days happen, never had anyone to talk to while the movie played in the background, always too restless with the charged air to write or read.  It’s even worse after school with no homework and no _Chronicle_ to edit and, after the mail is checked, no acceptance letters to worry about getting.

He and Aaron decided that the best time to tell the rest of the staff would be at the end-of-semester party they’d thrown together (mostly because of Aaron, as most things were), when maybe on the last day before Christmas break they could think about the great way the semester ended instead of the lack of a following one.

The day before the last day of school Carson gets home before 4 pm and changes into sweatpants, pads around the kitchen in socks.  He’s completely lost on what to do with himself, empty stretches of afternoon and longer stretches of evening filled with a whole lot of nothing.  Aaron had to run errands for his mom so Carson pouts in every chair in the house, carrying around a phone he knows won’t ring.

A knock at the door isn’t totally strange, but it is rare.  Carson shrugs on a hoodie before he opens it to the December air.

“Aaron?” he asks, squinting a little.  “I thought you had errands to run?”

“I did,” Aaron replies, and he’s excited about something, fidgeting with his jacket zipper and shifting side-to-side.  “I ran them, and then I came here.”

“Ookay,” Carson says, used to indulging in Aaron’s sometimes cryptic whims.  “And?”

Aaron takes his left hand out of his pocket and opens it.

Carson can _feel_ his eyes bug out of his head.  “What is this?”

“It’s $273,” Aaron says, “and that’s just from the games I don’t play anymore.  The clerk at the GameStop told me if I sold my PS and PS2 I’d get double that.”

“Aaron I--”

“I told my parents last night at dinner, I couldn’t _not_ , not when it’s been upsetting you for the entire week and they could tell it was upsetting me too, and Dad said if we would give him a full-page ad in the _Chronicle_ he’d pay whatever we needed to finish out the year.”

_“Aaron.”_

“We don’t have to shut it down, Carson, we can keep writing and publishing no matter what they say, freedom of the press, right?  I want to give this to the clubs, and you, because all three of those things are incredibly important to me.  Please take it.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Carson sighs, stepping over the threshold and letting the screen door slam shut behind him, grabbing the front of Aaron’s jacket and pulling them together.

Carson’s never kissed anyone, only seen it in movies and read about it in books, but nothing could have prepared him for Aaron’s lips on his.  And really, he should expect that by now.

It’s good, really good, the startled gasp he can feel in a burst of cold air on his cheek and hear every tiny nuance of.  Warm pressure that equally matches his own and little suckles that send rolling heat all the way to his toes, and it’s _so good_.  Carson pulls back slowly, his mind catching up and holy shit he just kissed someone.

“So,” Carson says mindlessly, pulling back far enough to see Aaron’s face flushed and lips shiny red.  He kissed _Aaron_.

“Wait, does this mean...?” Aaron asks, shit-eating grin taken over by eyebrows drawn low with adorably unnecessary uncertainty.

Carson rolls his eyes, unable to keep the smile off his face.  “What do you fucking think?”

“Oh, okay, yes. Good.”

Carson slides his hands from Aaron’s shoulders up to cup his jaw to pull him in again.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> because you were all so fucking amazing and sweet with your birthday wishes for me, here's a birthday present for all of you!~

Carson doesn’t even realize there’s a fuzzy sort of silence, all the world narrowed down to the smooth skin of Aaron’s jaw and the warm-slick touch of his lips, until it’s abruptly broken by a blood-curdling shriek from the neighbors’ yard.

Reflexively he steps back, withdrawing his hands, but Aaron’s grip on his waist doesn’t let him get far.

“Damn kids,” Carson says mindlessly under his breath, forgetting the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth because Aaron—

 _Aaron_ , eyes half-closed and chest heaving, tongue darting out to lick his lips and cheeks deep red.  Carson can’t hear Aaron’s breathing over the pounding of his own pulse, the aborted gasps as he tries to wrap his head around this.  His cheeks are burning too, he can feel it.

The silence stretches, just their heavy breathing between them, and Carson fidgets against the pressing urge to put space between them until Aaron finally looks at him, chin raised just a fraction of an inch.

And Carson forgets everything but that look, something there that he’s never seen before but feels an awful lot like affection and happy disbelief and maybe, laid bare there in the open book of Aaron’s face, desire.

Kissing Aaron wasn’t impulse, not entirely.  Carson had made up his mind, probably back that night he apologized to Aaron in the parking lot of Los Taco Loco, definitely that afternoon in the journalism classroom holding the product of their labor in his hands—but a thorough examination of the pros and cons of the situation felt entirely too clinical for _this_.

Carson can feel the knots in his own stomach, his sweaty palms, heart just beginning to slow down.  The surge of bright warmth creeping up his neck, invoked by Aaron’s thumb stroking over his hipbone.  He knew, ostensibly, that the feelings were there, too, had let them consume him more than once lying in the dark in his bed.  But feeling like _this_ , like the world shifted right under his feet and holding onto Aaron is the only thing that kept him steady?-- he had no inkling of this.

“If I don’t make it home for dinner my mother will kill me,” Aaron says finally, barely louder than a whisper.

The shrieks start up again and Aaron looks away instinctively, the break in eye contact clearing Carson’s mind enough for him to realize his hands are clasped in front of him, shocked there when he thought about pulling away.  He can’t even remember why, now, resting his curled fists on Aaron’s chest.  He imagines he can feel the precious beating organ there under his pinkie fingers.

“We can’t have that,” Carson says, tries to snark, but all the venom turns to sugar on his tongue.

Aaron grins, the biggest Carson’s ever seen, and tugs him closer again, completely at odds with his words.  Carson’s not complaining, grabbing at his shirt collar to drag him in.

This kiss is different, familiar but still enthralling, intoxicating.  Carson paid enough attention in school to know exactly how drugs work and Aaron’s lips are euphoric enough to fit the bill.  Addictive, too—he already wants more.  He opens his mouth experimentally and Aaron follows his lead, letting every press and pull become deeper, almost _dirty._

Carson loves it, can’t get enough of it, could kiss Aaron for hours, he knows, and never get sick of it.  He wants to do just that, wants to do everything he’s seen in movies and then everything else and then maybe invent new things together—

Abruptly, Aaron pulls back, stringing apologies together as he fishes in his pocket.  Carson sways a little, wanting to run his fingers over his lips but refraining.

“Hey mom.  Yeah, sorry.  I got held up at the post office, this guy wanted to mail something to Nicaragua.”  Carson tries to ease away but Aaron doesn’t let him, curling his free arm farther around Carson’s waist.  Surprised, he stays, watching Aaron’s lips as he talks and finally giving in to touch his own mouth when he can see how swollen and red Aaron’s are, how his lips must be the same.

“…I’m on my way home now.  Okay. Okay! Love you too.”  Aaron ends the call and slips his phone back in his pocket, blushing all over again when he sees Carson staring at his mouth.

“Sorry,” Carson whispers, though he’s really not sorry at all, looping his arms around Aaron’s shoulders.  And Aaron smiles again, Carson full of wonder that he can invoke such a response, and leans in to wrap his other arm too, burying his nose in Carson’s neck.  It only takes a second for Caron to tighten his embrace in response.

He’d been reserved for so long, forced there by the cruelties of circumstance.  With no one to give affection to without it just flying off into the ether, he was content to be spiny, to be satisfied never knowing what he was missing when he had to watch couples walk hand in hand down the hallways and sneak kisses behind their lockers.

But with Aaron—he wants it.  All.  Aaron, who didn’t back down when Carson bowed up, who waited when Carson left, who cared when no one else did.  Who didn’t just rebound what Carson gave him but went out of his way to give him more, to give first.  He wants.

Fingers squeezing at his sides in a little warning, Aaron releases him.  “I’m sorry, I really have to go.”

“That’s okay,” Carson says, the thick regret in Aaron’s voice making him want to squirm with happiness like a child. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Aaron nods, darting in for another kiss that catches Carson off-guard, discomposing him all over again.  “See you tomorrow.”

Staring out at the spot where his old VW Beetle disappears, Carson doesn’t go back inside until his toes start to numb, street lights already on.

\--

The last day of school is predictably chaotic, report cards in homeroom (4 A’s, 2 B’s, and a C in Algebra, he’s surprised he actually passed) and thinly-justified movies playing as the classroom descends into chaos around him.

He’s halfway paying attention to _October Sky_ (which he’s watched at least once a year for the past seven years of his academic life) when his phone vibrates in his pocket.

Surprised, Carson looks around and sees more than one classmate sneaking texts under their desk, so with one eye on Mrs. Davis, who’s hovering in the doorframe talking to another teacher, he pulls out his phone.

_Aaron :)  
Hi :) I hope you’re having a good morning :)_

Carson smiles, stomach all fluttery just from that. 

_Watching Homer Hickam build a rocket for the thousandth time is about as enthralling as you’d imagine.  
But it’s better now :)_

He pays even less attention to the movie, glancing down at his lap every two seconds until the screen finally lights up.

_Aaron :)  
You’re just saying that :)_

Shaking his head a little at himself, Carson texts back

_I would never :)_

On some level, he thinks, maybe he should be concerned that he’s quickly turning into the cliche ridiculous, infatuated teenager he hates so much.  But when he looks at every tiny smiling emoticon on his phone screen all he can think about is the way Aaron smiled last night (was it really not even 18 hours before?) and it doesn’t feel silly or vapid at all.

\--

Crouching behind the old school PC that’s hooked up to the projector, Carson sets up as the journalism classroom starts to fill.

He stands behind the front desk as they file in, unable to stop his wide smile when Aaron appears in the doorway.  And he’s smiling right back, pushing up his sleeves and ducking his head a little as he walks by, sitting in his usual desk.

Knowing Malerie’s camera is pointed his way, Carson picks up his stress ball, tossing it back and forth between his hands to keep them busy.  Like he can’t even help it, his gaze flicks back to Aaron, surprised to find his eyes wide and bright.  Carson raises an eyebrow, squeezing the ball in his left hand for a second, watching Aaron watch him—just like old times, only now he knows he’s allowed, and it sends a thrill straight through him to know that Aaron’s allowed, too.  That he wants Aaron to look, and he has no reason to be ashamed about that.

The bell rings and Carson tosses the ball a few more times, not missing the pointed swallow he can see in the rise and fall of Aaron’s throat.  When Vicki finally, _finally_ takes her seat he puts it down, quietly filing the information away for later (for what, he’s not sure, but it should definitely be useful) as he moves around to lean against the desk.

“Well,” Carson announces, crossing his arms, “We finally made it to the end of the semester.  Barely, like _nearly-crashed-and-burned-a-dozen-times barely_ , but here we are.”

Emilio smiles—actually, most of them smile, and it catches Carson in a way he didn’t even know was possible.

“And that’s the biggest thing: _we_.  It may have taken weeks and weeks of yelling and prodding, and weeks more of a more gentle approach—” he smiles pointedly at Aaron, not wider than he did towards anyone else, but Aaron’s answering beam makes something bloom warm and tight in his chest— “but somehow, some way, we all did it together.  And that’s what counts.”

“Jeez, Phillips, when did you go so fuckin’ soft?” Vicki calls, but when Carson scowls at her, she’s smiling too.

Carson shakes his head, pointing at her playfully.  “You better appreciate it today, because as soon as we all get back from Christmas break it’s right back to the grind.  I know our party is after school, so I figured it would be best to use our time in class to—”

He holds the suspense, keeping his face stern despite Aaron’s silly grin (he is, of course, in on the plan), and clicks the remote so that the projector hums to life above him.

“—watch _Ferris Bueller’s Day Off_ ,” he finishes, smiling at the cheers that follow and moving to flick off the lights as the title credits start to roll.

He’s not even surprised that Aaron has the desk next to his pulled in so that the table tops are touching, but he can’t help but fill up with that effervescent kind of joy when Aaron pats it pointedly, eyebrows inviting him to sit.

He slips into the seat, watching the rest of the staff warily even though there’s no reason for them to suspect that he and Aaron are anything but good friends, as they’ve been in front of them more than once.  But then it certainly doesn’t feel like _good friends_ when an ankle hooks around Carson’s, making him gasp quietly as Ferris’s voiceover begins.

Heart thumping hard, Carson cuts his eyes at Aaron, trying to glare but faltering at his round, earnest stare.

A piece of paper with a pen slides in front of him, a sentence scrawled near the top.

_That was a really beautiful speech._

Picking up the pen, Carson raises his eyebrows dubiously.  Aaron gestures for him to write.

**_Thank you.  I know we decided not to tell them that the club was ever in danger, but I still feel so… relieved.  And grateful.  To you and your dad.  You really saved us all._ **

He can’t even pretend to watch the movie when he shoves the paper and pen back, nerves twisting his stomach as he watches Aaron’s long eyelashes flutter, pupils darting back and forth across the page.

Aaron turns his head and Carson inhales sharply at the sincerity there in the wrinkle between his eyebrows.  _Carson,_ he mouths, one hand over his heart.  Looking away, Carson nods quietly as Aaron starts to write.

The paper comes back.

_It was seriously the least I could do.  Really.  I don’t know how many ways there are to say “the pleasure was all mine” but I’m sure you do, so all of them apply._

And next to something barely begun and crossed out, written very small, it says

_Is it absolutely crazy how much I love the sound of “we”?_

Carson’s glad the room is dark because he can practically feel the tips of his ears turning red.  With twitching fingers he writes:

**_I think “we” is my new favorite word._ **

He almost slides the paper across but reconsiders, tapping the pen against his wrist and thinking.  It’s not really the way he wanted to ask the question, but now seems as good a time as any.

**_Which is why, I wanted to ask you something..._ **

**_Will you be my Co-Editor next semester?_ **

He doesn’t watch this time, can’t, sees Aaron’s mouth hanging open in the corner of his vision and squeezes their ankles a little tighter together.

_Carson, I would be so honored.  Really. I would._

Vicki and Dwayne have started a (technically illegal, but Carson couldn’t give a fuck about school rules if he tried) card game in the corner and Malerie is attempting to communicate with Emilio, so Carson takes the relative cover to whisper frantically between them.

“Are you sure?  I know it’s presumptuous of me and I don’t expect you to hang around just because we’re—I mean, we—”

Aaron stops smiling at him long enough for his eyes to dart around the room and then Carson is stopped mid-sentence by a gentle press of lips against his cheekbone.  He blinks slowly, reeling a little, but Aaron just smiles softly like he didn’t give Carson the first casual affection he can ever recall.

“I’m positive,” Aaron says quietly, and Carson only feels a little unsure when he reaches to grab Aaron’s hand under the desk.

Aaron’s answering squeeze and scrunchy, radiant smile tell him he never should have been concerned.

\--

Without a word being exchanged on the matter, Aaron ends up staying behind to help Carson clean up after their little party, sacking up the trash while Carson lines up the desks.

“Tell your mom her gooey bars were incredible,” Carson says between grating scrapes of metal legs against the floor.

“Of course,” Aaron says, straightening up from his crouch, bag safely tied off, and Carson looks away quickly, trying to pretend like he wasn’t looking at the way Aaron’s jeans cling to his thighs.

And that’s something that not too long before he wouldn’t even let himself think about, someone else’s _thighs_ , but now he’s curious.  He thinks about Aaron questioning the same things, if he wondered if Carson was looking too, if he liked the idea of Carson looking.

Judging by the smirk on his face when Carson finally meets Aaron’s eyes, that answer is probably yes.

Carson huffs like it was Aaron that was caught instead.  “Come on, lover boy, let’s take a romantic walk to the dumpsters.”

 _“Oh lover boy,”_ Aaron sing-songs right on cue, holding the door open with his foot and letting Carson take the lead.

They end up sitting on the trunk of Carson’s car again, the parking lot deserted and the afternoon sun still bright.  It’s a warm enough day that it’s kind of nice to sit outside, and it’s even nicer when Aaron scoots in so that their shoulders press together.

“Thank you,” Carson says into the quiet, eyes trained on the brick walls of the science wing.

“You know, you’ve been saying that a lot,” Aaron says, obviously teasing, leaning his body weight into Carson.  “I think you’ve thanked me _more_ than enough.”

“Shut up,” Carson retorts, not an ounce of bitterness in his voice as he colors all over again at what Aaron’s implying.  “I don’t think I’ve said thank you and meant it more than a handful of times in my life, so consider yourself special.”

He expects Aaron to tease him back, but instead he honestly looks touched.  Carson clears his throat, not at all used to being so vulnerable with another person.  “And besides,” he adds shakily, “The _thanking_ was mutual.”

“Carson, I—” Aaron begins, and stops, shaking his head a little.  Carson hasn’t had many Serious Talks in his life, never one with someone his own age, but he knows that tone all too well.  He sits up straighter, looks away again.

“Please don’t close off,” Aaron whispers, _pleads_ almost, takes Carson’s breath away with it.  “It’s not-- I didn’t mean that.  Let me start over.”

Aaron shifts so that his knees angle towards him, pulls gently on Carson’s folded elbow until he gives in, gives Aaron his hands, gives him his attention.  Effortlessly gives him a piece of his heart.

“Carson Phillips, I’ve had a massive crush on you since the first grade.”

Carson-- laughs out loud, buries his face in his own shoulder at the total absurdity of that.  “You did _not_.”

“I did!”  Aaron says, sounding wounded.  “You can ask my mom, I know I wrote about you in my first grade journal, like, every other day.”

Carson shakes his head emphatically, still chuckling softly, but not contradicting him again.

“ _Anyways._ There’s a lot I still don’t know about myself, but there’s a few things I’m pretty sure about.  I should have known I was hopelessly infatuated when you were the first name I looked for every year we got class rosters, not my own.  I know no matter how many times I try my aunt’s pecan sandies they’re still going to taste like sawdust to me.  I know I have this strange knack for doing the wrong thing like 90% of the time, and the other 10% that’s sort of right can all be chalked up to sheer dumb luck.  And that applies to everything.  Most of the time I feel like I’m just stumbling around, going through the motions.  I think was biding time, paying penance until my real life could begin.”

That _was_ stands out to Carson more than anything else.  He squeezes Aaron’s hands, not having to vocalize that he feels the same.

“But then,” Aaron continues, corner of his mouth twitching, “this crazy thing happened.  And this thing firmly in the 10%, by the way, one of those clear serendipitous stars-aligning once-in-a-lifetime things,” he adds, making Carson shake his head a little again in still-lingering disbelief.

“It is!” Aaron insists, so sincere in a way Carson rarely sees.  He wonders if Aaron feels anything like he does— cracked open and raw, heart beating hard like it’s reminding him exactly what the stakes are here.

 _I know,_ he thinks, looking at Aaron’s hands pressed between his.  _I know very well._

Aaron takes a deep breath.  “It’s kind of-- this wasn’t exactly meant to happen, not here in this place, but it did, and I swear I’ll never speak badly about Clover, California again as long as I live.  I’m not sure exactly what it is you want from me, Carson, but I want to give it to you.”

Carson lets out a shaky breath that somehow in emptying his lungs also expands the insistent warmth in the pit of his stomach, brings that calm certainty that settles happily into his bones.  Aaron tilts his head, wiggles his fingers so Carson smooths his thumb over his knuckles without thinking.

“That’s probably a bigger promise than you want to make, you know,” Carson says, smiling a little.  “There’s no possible way you could keep from talking shit about Clover.  The jokes about Clover write themselves.

“But honestly, Aaron, I just want to be happy.  I think maybe I clung so hard to things that drove me absolutely insane because it meant I was _doing_ something, that even if I was offending people or annoying the shit out of them, a reaction meant someone was listening to me.  There’s no point in telling a story if no one’s there to hear it, right?”

Aaron nods, but Carson doesn’t need to know if he understands.  He can’t imagine when he wouldn’t.

“So that’s why I’m saying, fuck it.  Fuck this town and everyone in it if they think they can dictate what I do or who I kiss.  You’re right, this isn’t really ideal, but it’s reality.  And I know I would like reality a lot better with you.”

“Is that a...?” Aaron asks, grin already threatening to overtake his face and scrunch up his eyes like Carson adores.

“Aaron,” he begins, pausing for a second to find the right words.  “I want you to be my boyfriend.”

With a surprised little laugh Aaron nearly slides off the trunk.  “Carson!” he scolds giddily, cheeks rosy pink.  “Yes, of course.  _Yes._ I would be honored to call you my boyfriend.”

God, the title sounds even better when Aaron says it, and Carson just wants to kiss him until it’s the only word either of them can recall.

“I hope you know how to get into the backseat of the Beetle,” Carson says saucily, raising his eyebrows.

“I’m sure I can figure it out. Why?”

Carson smirks-- a pretty good imitation of Aaron, if he does say so himself.

“Because, right now?  I wanna make out with my boyfriend.”


	11. Chapter 11

It turns out getting into the back seat is less smooth move like Carson was imagining and more knees and elbows and sort of falling over the center console.  His knee lands dangerously close to Aaron’s crotch and being in Aaron’s lap is something he was _not_ ready for-- nor Aaron, judging from the roundness of his eyes and mouth.

“My bad,” Carson says, scrambling back to hit the door, trying to catch his breath.  He should have thought about taking off his jacket beforehand, because there’s no way he can do it now.  Not without punching Aaron in the face in the process.

The seconds tick by and all the bravado he had before drains right out of him.  Carson has no idea what he’s doing.

Aaron’s lips press together in a hard line and his shoulders start shaking and Carson only gets out “Are y--” before Aaron is laughing so loud the car is trembling underneath him.

“ _What?”_ Carson says, two seconds from getting up to wrestle his way back to the front seat.  Aaron shakes his head, still laughing, waving a hand to tell Carson to wait.

Carson sits back, crossing his arms and scowling at Aaron still giggling.

“Aaron, really,” Carson says derisively, huffing and trying so hard to sound unamused but one corner of his mouth slips into a smile without his permission and-- he’s a goner.  Bringing up a hand to cover his mouth, Carson’s small laugh turns into a huge one pulled right from his gut, making his abs hurt as he tries to squash it before it falls out of his mouth.

Aaron leans forward and before Carson can stop him he’s tugging at his wrist, pulling Carson’s hand away from his mouth and fitting their fingers together so Carson’s laughter has nowhere to go but out.  It’s juvenile and silly and not the least bit refined or attractive and Carson can _feel_ his shoulders relax where he had been holding them so tensely.

Aaron smiles and Carson returns it without hesitation.  “I’m sorry, that was just way, way less smooth than I expected,” Aaron apologizes, and Carson laughs again, carefree and too-loud in the small car.  Instead of explaining, he closes the space between them and kisses the confusion on Aaron’s face away.

“Mmph,” Aaron says in surprise, and Carson pulls back smiling.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Aaron dismisses, lips already puckered as he dips in to kiss again.

Carson’s stomach feels like it’s full of warm, fluttering something (so _that’s_ what they mean by the butterflies thing) as Aaron rests his free hand on the line of his jaw, fingers threaded in the hair at the nape of his neck.  Carson balls his free hand in a fist and clutches tighter at Aaron’s hand in his and kisses back, keeps Aaron close so that one kiss becomes the length of two, and then they’re _really_ kissing, open-mouthed and searching and still a little shy but _so_ good.

Aaron pulls back much too soon, and Carson is pouting before he even opens his eyes.  He digs something out of his pocket and has to let Carson’s hand go to do it.  Carson sits back a little, hands curled useless on his own thighs.

“It’s from my dad,” Aaron explains, looking at his phone screen.  Carson is surprised to find the sun is nearly set.  It must be nearly 6 o’clock.

“He asked what pizza toppings I wanted.  I guess I should go before he gets back with pizza and starts demanding to know where I am.”  Aaron looks so apologetic that Carson leans in to quick-kiss him again, thrilled when he looks a little dazed and thrilled that he can just _do_ that now, whenever he and Aaron want to.

“You’re forgiven this time,” Carson says, moving back to let Aaron clamber over the seats first.

\--

It had been so easy to get used to Aaron texting him every night when he started two weeks before.  It wasn’t constant, just scattered over the last hour before they both finally got drowsy enough to sleep. It always seemed to become some kind of good-natured debate, something that made Carson smile when Aaron could pretty easily keep up with his give and take.

It’s the second night of winter break-- Carson already going stir-crazy without a routine to stick to-- when his phone lights up right around 10 as usual.  But it’s a _call_.

Carson feels jittery as he accepts it.  “Hello?” he says, half-holding his breath.

 _“Hey,”_ Aaron greets, his voice pitched low and warm in a way that Carson knows is a put-on,  but he doesn’t comment on it. _“What’s up?”_

Carson smiles, pushes away from his laptop and the document he was half-heartedly working on for the last couple hours between scrolling through reddit.  “Nothing really, just dicking around on the internet and wondering how I’m gonna survive three whole weeks of this.”

Aaron hums in agreement.  _“You’re not kidding.  I think my parents are going to make me clean out the attic before it’s over.  My mom keeps saying that I look like I need something to do, so I just keep sitting in my room to avoid her.”_

“Stay at home moms aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.  I haven’t gotten a sack lunch or an after-school snack in over ten years. I _have_ been able to use the oven since I was nine.”

_“Oh my god, my mom still cuts the crusts off my sandwiches and gets the fries that are smiley faces.  Be careful what you wish for.”_

Carson laughs, spinning in his chair and feeling warm with Aaron’s return laughter in his ear.  “You called me.”

_“I did.  I figured this would have a lot more instant gratification than texting.”_

“Ahh,” Carson says.  “Always so impatient.”

_“And I missed hearing the snark straight from the source.”_

Carson sucks in a breath, answers a beat too late, “Well, I’m a never-ending fount of that.”

Aaron laughs again and Carson gets up, sprawls across his bed instead.

_“Actually, as much as I want to tell you about this article on pesticides I read today, let me ask you something before I lose my nerve.”_

Carson rolls over onto his stomach just to do something, nervous energy jumping in his veins.  “Yes?”

_“Tomorrow night, are you busy?”_

He doesn’t say anything else, and Carson rolls his eyes and confirms that he does not. Even though Aaron knew better than to think he did.

_“Awesome.  I’ll pick you up at six.”_

Carson laughs, a little shocked.  “And what will we be doing tomorrow night?”

_“Oh, well.  I thought I would take you out to dinner. And a movie?”_

He’s so unsure and fumbly about the whole thing, and Carson just wishes he were there to kiss him.  “That sounds awesome,” he says finally, heart thudding too high in his throat to come up with a tease.

 _“Awesome,”_ Aaron echoes, and Carson only kicks his feet twice before he prompts Aaron to tell him about the pesticides.

\--

Six o’clock is an easy time to sneak out of Carson’s house unnoticed.  Sheryl is long past drunk, sleeping some of it off on the couch so she can have another four glasses before bed.  Carson doesn’t even glance at her before walking right out the front door.

Aaron’s idling in his driveway and Carson jumps into the front seat, unzipping his hoodie at the blast of heat inside the car.  He wished he had had more than 18 hours to come up with a date-suitable outfit, but Malerie had approved this one (he told her he had a job interview) so the light blue button-down was as good as it was going to get.

“Hey,” Aaron says, and Carson returns his smile easily.

“Hey,” he echoes, swallowing to re-wet his dry throat.  Aaron looks _good_ , bright yellow jeans (he has to know those are Carson’s kryptonite) paired with a white button-down under a v-necked sweater and a riotously patterned blazer that’s bolder than anything he’s worn to school.

Aaron must notice him staring because he looks down.  “Totally got this blazer for a dollar at the thrift store yesterday.  It’s amazing what people will just throw away!”

Carson, to his credit, doesn’t even start to roll his eyes.  “I totally dig it,” he says, touching the bare wrist below Aaron’s scrunched-up sleeves before he puts his seatbelt on.

He had his doubts about the safety of a car that was almost older than the two of them combined, but Aaron seems a safe enough driver as he pulls carefully out of Carson’s driveway.

They pass the “Hope to See You Soon!” sign that denotes the city limits and Carson perks up.

“Big excursion, huh?” he says, settling down in his seat.

Aaron laughs.  “Like I’d take you anywhere in Clover for a date.  Los Taco Loco is the only decent place in town, and Francesca would never leave us alone.”

Carson laughs too, imagining it.  If only one person they knew would approve of their relationship, it would be Fran.

“And your mother let you do this?” Carson asks, mostly joking but still curious.  This is the same woman who only let him stay after school to work on the memoir because Aaron told her it was for extra credit.

Aaron’s smile falls.  “I told her I was going to play video games with Toby. She never minds if I stay over there until late.”

“Shit,” Carson swears quietly, angry at himself. He should have never brought it up.  His hand falls on Aaron’s arm again, not sure if he’s helping.  Aaron takes his right hand off the wheel and turns it palm up, and Carson is quick to squeeze their fingers together.

“Hey, if it helps, I’ve never had a curfew and my mom will be too drunk to even read a clock when I get back,” he says lightly, leaning closer to Aaron.

The lights of the city come into view quickly and the subject is easily dropped, Carson turning up the radio when a good eighties song comes on that he knows will make Aaron sing along.

It’s halfway through a completely off-key and mostly yelling rendition of “We Will Rock You” that Aaron turns into the parking lot of a brick building.

The name of the restaurant is a little ambiguous, and Carson leans closer as if it’ll give him X-ray vision.  “And what does Broilers serve?  Seafood? Don’t they broil fish? Or is it steak?”

He looks at Aaron, who has turned off the car and is just staring at him, smiling a little.

“You totally don’t have to woo me with steak,” Carson says, hitting his shoulder playfully.  “Lobster is fine.”

“C’mere,” Aaron murmurs as he frames Carson’s face with his hands, pulling him closer as Carson sucks in a deep breath, anticipation hot in his belly.  Aaron’s mouth is just as magical as he remembers, lips that suck the breath right out of his lungs.  Carson reaches blindly for the lapels of Aaron’s ridiculous blazer, holding on tight as he presses closer.

Aaron’s lips are shiny red when he pulls back, smiling brightly.  “I’ve missed that.”

And Carson can’t even in good conscience make a joke about it only being a few days because he’s missed it too.  It’s hard not to see Aaron everyday when he’s gotten so used to it.

Carson gently pries one of Aaron’s hands off his jaw to squeeze his fingers.  “It’s all right now. Let’s do this date thing.”

\--

Aaron first brings up the topic of Christmas gifts on the 23rd, in the middle of pretending to clean the table right next to Carson’s in Los Taco Loco for the third time in ten minutes.

“Aaron!  Just take a break already!” a deep voice from the kitchen booms through the window.

“Thanks Erito!,” Aaron calls back, plopping into the chair across from Carson and tossing his washrag somewhere towards the bucket.

Carson was already a little flushed from the mention of Christmas gifts, and now Aaron’s Uncle Eric calling them out makes him even more flustered.  Thank god for a slow Monday afternoon right before Christmas that there aren’t more people in the restaurant.

“I know it’s kind of last minute,”  Aaron continues, hands folded on the table and very serious set to his shoulders.  “But I have a Christmas present for you, and I want to give it to you.”

“I have one for you too,” Carson says, taking a sip of his drink and feeling off-kilter to Aaron’s stern demeanor.

Aaron looks surprised-- relieved?-- and leans back, smiling.  “Oh, okay.  Good then.  Is tomorrow better, or Christmas Day?  I know usually Christmas Eve is busier, so we could do Christmas Day Night, or…”

They both fall silent as Fran wanders over with a cup to refill Carson’s Sprite.  She lingers longer than strictly necessary, finally throwing up her hands and cursing in flowing Spanish as she walks away.

“Christmas Day Night would be perfect,” Carson says, smiling as Aaron reaches over to cover his hand and squawking when Aaron grabs his cup to gulp down half of it at once.

\--

Carson finds himself realigning his bookshelf for the fifth time, anxiously smoothing his bedspread again as the clock gets closer and closer to 7:30.

He hadn’t really wanted Aaron to come to his house so soon, but in a way, only having about 24 hours to worry about it versus a week or something was probably a good thing.  His room was spotless, at least. He couldn’t do too much about the living room without Sheryl asking him why he was cleaning.

Aaron’s house had been a no-go with the family members that were staying in every available room (including Aaron’s own-- his sister’s fiance had been banished from her room by their mother’s request), and the only other place open on Christmas Day was Wal-Mart.  Unless they just wanted to sit in Aaron’s car, this was probably the best option.

Carson thumbs the corner of his wrapped gift again, all out of chores for distractions.  He had gotten Sheryl dressed and out of the house yesterday to go to the Christmas Eve family dinner at Clover Meadows.  It was more cheerful than the Thanksgiving one by far, with large Christmas trees at every corner and garland covering every surface.  The local children’s choir did decent renditions of carols as they ate, giving them more excuse to not talk.  It was almost nice.

He let Sheryl get the car warmed up as he helped Grandma back to her room, nodding at the nurse who thanked him for being such a sweet grandson.  He can’t help her into bed because then a broken hip or something would be his liability, so he just pulled her wheelchair as close as he could get it and carefully put on the brakes.

“Grandma, Aaron asked me to be his boyfriend.  Or, well, I asked him,” Carson had said nervously, smiling uncertainly.

“That’s so nice dear,” Grandma said, and Carson could almost pretend that she really knew what he said.  “So nice.”

“He took me on a date and paid for everything and didn’t even try to make out with me in the back of the theatre or anything.  Not that I wouldn’t have let him.”  Carson laughed, looked up and dared to hope with Grandma’s eyes so clear and focused.

“I really like him, Grandma.”

“Then don’t let him go, honey.”

Carson practically cried, folding his Grandma in a hug that she almost returned, her frail hands reaching up to pat at Carson’s arms.

“Thanks Grandma,” he said as he left, patting the tinsel around her doorway.

Carson’s phone buzzes with a text-- he had asked Aaron not to use the doorbell.  He leaves his gift in the center of the bed and takes a deep breath.

Aaron is a sight for sore eyes even just two days after Carson saw him last.  He can see the lines in his face smooth as he looks, knows that the holiday hasn’t been easy for him either.

“Hi there,” Carson says, smile turning into a laugh when Aaron steps up to kiss him without preamble, snowman gift bag dangling from one elbow as he balances his hands on Carson’s shoulders.

“Merry Christmas, Carson,” Aaron says as he pulls back, all smiles and shining eyes.  If it had been snowing outside, white-dusted hair and shoulders would have completed the look.  There’s plenty of cheap Christmas lights on Carson’s street, though, so it’s almost picturesque.

“Merry Christmas,” Carson echoes, pulling Aaron inside to shut the door on the cool outside air.  He mimes for Aaron to be quiet as they enter the front hall, motioning him inside his bedroom door and shutting it behind them.

Aaron doesn’t comment, though Carson can see the pitying set of his eyes and mouth.  He grabs the small wrapped box on his bed instead, holding it out.

“Open them together?” Aaron asks once Carson has the snowman gift bag settled in his lap.

“No-- open yours first,” Carson says decisively, hands nervously wrapped around the paper bag.

Aaron smiles, running his finger under the plentiful tape holding the green patterned paper together and carefully peeling it away.  Carson chews on the inside of his mouth anxiously as Aaron opens the white box.

“Oh Carson, I _love_ these,” Aaron says happily, putting the yellow-framed wayfarers on.  Carson smiles tightly, waiting for him to pull out the other half of his present.

Aaron falters a little at the card of colorfully patterned button pins, and Carson quickly cuts in.  “I know you’re not-- _out_ \-- and that’s okay, that’s your battle, not mine.  But I wanted to kind of give you a little something to remind you of who you are.  They’re not full-on rainbow flag or anything, but I thought they might be kind of a symbolic thing.  And from me, because I completely, happily accept that part of you and appreciate that you trusted me enough to let me know it.  And yeah.”

It’s kind of a lame speech, but Carson has always been so much better in text than in voice.  Nevertheless, Aaron turns and throws his arms around Carson’s middle, hugging him tight.  The angle is twisted as they’re sitting next to each other, and Carson is so surprised that it takes him a second to wrap his arms around Aaron too, but they manage, and it’s nearly perfect.

“Thank you, Carson,” Aaron says finally, releasing Carson slowly and kissing his cheek.

Carson ducks his head, smiling into the paper as he takes apart the gift bag in his lap.

 

He reaches in and pulls out a leather-bound notebook and a thin plastic case.  He turns over the notebook and sucks in a breath when he sees his own name embossed on the front cover.

“The pen has your name on it too,” Aaron says, opening the plastic case to show him.  “It’s a kind of modern quill pen, so it has the metal nub but there’s a ball bearing right in the tip so that you don’t have to mess with an inkwell.  I know you type a lot more than you handwrite but-- it made me think of you.”

Carson runs his fingers over the raised letters.  “Wow.”

“Oh, and,” Aaron leans closer, puts the pen case in Carson’s limp fingers.  “You can get a new ink cartridge whenever this one runs low, but right now it has blue ink. I told the store that’s what I had to have.”

He laughs, bringing the pen closer so he can see the name engraved there in flowing script.  “I used to write longhand all the time, but I just stopped writing anything but articles and it was so much easier to have them digital the whole time.  I-- thank you, Aaron.  It means a lot.”

Carson isn’t sure if what he said was enough to explain the warm happiness in his chest that feels so foreign and so welcome, but Aaron smiles brightly enough that it doesn’t matter.  Carefully, Carson sets the notebook and pen off to the side before he wraps his arms around Aaron’s shoulders.  He meets Aaron’s already-open mouth halfway, inhaling sharply when strong arms hold low on his waist.

He angles his head just-so to the left, already knows how to press in just right to have Aaron breathing hard through his nose and tightening the arms around his back.  Carson feels bold, runs his fingers through the shorter hair at the nape of Aaron’s neck and the unmistakable low groan in the back of his throat makes Carson smile against his lips.

The arms around his waist tighten again and Carson fumbles as they start to tilt towards the bed.

“You-- want to...?” Carson says, so out of the comfort zone he’s found in the sweet, fun kisses they’ve exchanged so far.

Aaron kisses his cheek, pulls back but doesn’t let him wiggle away.  “Only if you do.”

Carson’s feeling a little overheated, but this is _Aaron_.  He nods once, grinding out an _okay_ to hear it in his own ears.   Aaron leans in to join their lips again and Carson gets one knee on the edge of the mattress, toes of his other foot still dragging the floor.  Aaron has to bend his neck with Carson this far over him, and Carson holds either side of Aaron’s head, a little uncertain and fingertips shaky. Aaron runs his teeth so slowly over the inside of Carson’s bottom lip that Carson nearly shakes right out of his hold.  With a deep, trembling breath, Carson gets both knees on the mattress and leans his weight into Aaron so that he relaxes incrementally to the comforter.

Even curled up all on one side of Aaron’s body, Carson feels heavy and slow and powerful hovering over him like this, Aaron’s hands warm on his back and brushing bare skin where his shirt has ridden up.  Aaron’s smile is so happy and comfortable, and he darts up to kiss at the soft skin under Carson’s jaw.

“O-oh,” Carson breathes as Aaron takes skin between his lips and _sucks_ , not hard enough to bruise but enough that Carson feels it all the way down his spine, eyes fluttering closed.

He looks so goddamn proud of himself that Carson has to wipe the smug grin off his face, kisses Aaron hard and gets his bottom lip between his teeth to give him a taste of his own medicine.

Aaron groans so loud that Carson pulls back, gasping for oxygen in the overheated air between them.

“Maybe we should, um, cool off a little bit,” Aaron says, not meeting Carson’s eyes as he squeezes his waist one more time before releasing him.

“We should--? Oh,” Carson says, surprised to find that he’s hard in his jeans.  He usually doesn’t respond quite that enthusiastically, to pictures or dirty thoughts or even dreams. His eyes dart down before he can stop them and the drastically-more-prominent bulge in Aaron’s tight jeans makes his entire face flood red.

He moves to sit up, but Aaron tugs at his hand.  “Hey no-- this is nice, right?  We can just lay here. Watch a movie or something?”

Carson is incredulous until Aaron crawls up to the head of the bed, relaxes on the extra pillow and pats the spot next to him.

His mouth twists up in a wry smile.  “Fine, we’ll _‘watch a movie,’_ okay.”

He finds something in his DVD collection they both agree on ( _The Avengers_ , no surprise there) and to his surprise-- actually watch it.  Carson’s only seen it twice, so he still catches new dialogue and laughs at the jokes.  It doesn’t occur to him until over halfway through that Aaron’s just been watching _him,_ not even having to glance at the screen to know what’s going on.

“We could have picked a different movie,” Carson stage-whispers.

“This is fine,” Aaron retorts, smiling and edging his fingers under Carson’s hand until he gets the point and lets him hold it.

\--

Aaron’s pushing-it curfew is still 11:00, and Carson practically counts down the seconds as he has Aaron wrapped around him in the entryway.

“I really have to go,” Aaron says for the fifth time in the last ten minutes, making no move to actually leave.

Carson sighs, smiling even as he’s shaking his head.  “Alright, stud, if you don’t leave now you’re going to get grounded for a week and that won’t be good for anyone.”

“Stud?” Aaron asks, and Carson just shoves at him until he finally stumbles out onto the front porch.

“Put some ice on your lips!” Carson calls as Aaron gets into his little yellow Beetle, rolling his eyes at the kiss that Aaron blows him and putting his hand up to catch it all the same.

He watches until Aaron’s tail lights disappear down the street, leaning against the doorframe and smiling to himself.  He runs a thumb over his bottom lip.

Double-checking the locks on the door, Carson moves back to his room, flipping off lights as he goes.

“Was that the boy you told me about?”

Carson nearly jumps out of his skin.

 _“Mom_ , jesus!  You scared the shit out of me.”

“Language, Carson,” Sheryl says half-heartedly, sitting upright.  “Was that the boy?”

“That was Aaron,” Carson says evasively, not wanting to put all his cards on the table.

Sheryl nods like she knows anyway.  The parts of motherhood that she chooses to participate in are always the most annoying.  Carson turns back to his room.  “Next time he comes over, introduce him to me.”

“Okay, mom,” Carson he replies finally, not even able to sound snarky when his bedsheets are all in disarray and there’s a brand new journal on his bedside table.

\--

Carson isn’t sure if it’s a good or bad thing that the next time Aaron comes to his house is at eight in the morning.  Sheryl is up and still sober, and when Carson tells her that Aaron is coming by (he gave her a full thirty-minute warning, she should have been happy he gave her that much) she screams at him and darts back to her bedroom.

Shrugging, Carson goes back to his room to double-check that he’s ready to go.  Aaron hadn’t given him much of an idea as to what they were doing today, just that it was a long car ride and that Carson could just dress casually.

The doorbell rings right at 8:01.

“Mom!” Carson yells, even though she ostensibly could hear it from back in her bedroom.  She emerges fully dressed and with most of her makeup on.

“You look good, Mom,” Carson says sincerely, feeling generous as he goes to open the front door.

Aaron moves in to kiss him so Carson takes half a step back, turns his head so it’ll land on his cheek instead.

“Aaron, this is my mom, Sheryl,” Carson says quickly, gesturing behind him.  “Mom, this is Aaron Christopherson.  My, uh, boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Aaron says, plastering on a too-bright smile and extending a hand.  “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“Same to you,” Sheryl says.  “Is there anything I can get you boys before you go?  Breakfast?  I’ve got some granola bars I think…”

Aaron politely says yes, and Carson waits until she disappears into the kitchen to turn and give Aaron a proper hello.  He distractedly kisses back just once before nudging Carson irritably.

“You didn’t warn me that I’d be meeting your mom _as your boyfriend,_ ” Aaron hisses, and Carson gapes.

“I didn’t think it was a big deal!” he shoots back, crossing his arms.

“Here you go!” Sheryl says, appearing around the corner with a grocery bag.  “I found some bananas and apples that were still good, and some water bottles.  Have a fun day!”

Aaron takes it and thanks her, but Carson is already halfway out the door.  He gets into Aaron’s Beetle and closes the door behind him hard.

The back door on Aaron’s side opens first, and he deposits the grocery bag from Sheryl on the floorboard.  Carson turns his face away as he opens the front door and slides in.

“Are you okay?” Aaron asks softly, the worry pinching his voice. “Did I do something wrong?”

Carson drops his arms and turns.  “ _No_ ,” he says firmly, leaning forward, “you didn’t. I guess I should have warned you.  I didn’t think about it.”

Aaron nods jerkily.  “It’s alright.  I shouldn’t-- I don’t need to call my parents now, do I?”

“What--” Carson starts, stops as he frantically connects the dots and realizes what Aaron must mean.  “No, Aaron no.  She won’t tell anyone anything, she doesn’t have anyone _to_ tell.  I didn’t swear her to secrecy or anything but she’s always respected my privacy.  I’ll -- I’ll call her now and tell her if you need me to.”

Aaron shakes his head.  “It’s okay.  If you trust her, I do too. I just wanted to be sure.”

Feeling stupid for being the least bit upset when Aaron had been so worked up and it was all his fault, Carson leans forward and kisses him softly.  He squeezes at his biceps until he feels Aaron respond, hands running up to cup either side of Carson’s neck.

“Sorry,” Carson whispers as they part.

“It’s okay,” Aaron says, and Carson is relieved that the smile on his face looks real now.  “We have an adventure to take.”

“No clues?” Carson asks not for the first time as Aaron backs out of his driveway.

“Nope,” Aaron replies, grinning as he slips bright yellow wayfarers on his nose. “You’ll see.”

\--

“No way,” Carson says in disbelief.  He’s been holding a hand over his eyes for the last ten minutes, after Aaron had almost caused an accident trying to do it himself.  It had taken several hard blinks to realize what he was seeing, and even more to convince himself he wasn’t making it up.

“Yes way!” Aaron says happily, opening his door.  The air is briny and sharp in a way that Carson never thought about before, and the ocean view in front of him is suddenly _real._ “Come on, I’ve got a blanket and cooler in the trunk.”

Carson stumbles out after him, taking what he gives him without looking at it.  Aaron gently folds his hand into Carson’s elbow as they cross the mostly-deserted parking lot.

“You can take your shoes off,” Aaron says as Carson stops short at the asphalt edge.  “It’s still pretty warm here.”

They strip their shoes off, tucking their socks inside and stepping onto the warm sand together.

“Oh my god,” Carson says, half-laughing as he struggles to get purchase in the sliding surface.  “This is way harder than it looks.”

Aaron takes some of the stuff from him even though he protests, letting Carson walk out closer to the water and shriek when the cold waves lap over his toes.

“It’s cold!” he yells, smiling when Aaron laughs.

“Is this good?” Aaron yells back, pointing to a smooth stretch of sand just a dozen feet back from the waterline.  Carson wades his way back to him, taking the other half of the blanket to lay it out.  They weigh down the corners with the cooler, their shoes, and a mound of sand to keep it from flapping away.

“Is it stupid that I’ve never actually considered the sand at the beach before now?  Like, obviously there’s sand at the beach.  But there’s _sand_ , like blowing in my eyes and sticking to my feet sand.”

Aaron smiles, settling down on one side of the blanket.  “Just be happy you’re old enough to realize this before playing in it for an entire day.  When I was little and my parents took my brother and sister and I here, I would go from the water to sitting on the beach and back to the water until my swim trunks were full of sand.  It was awful.”

“That’s terrible,” Carson agrees, laughing.  Aaron takes a pair of turquoise wayfarers out of one of the tote bags that were in his trunk and passes them to Carson.

“Thank you,” Carson says, sliding them on.  It’s sunny, a weak sort of winter sun that is warm enough, but far away.  He’s got enough clothes on that he probably won’t burn.  “Good thing I bought you yellow, I didn’t know you already had a pair of these.”

“I don’t,” Aaron says, smiling wider.  “You do.”

“These are for me?” Carson asks, disbelieving as he touches the frame.

“What can I say? They made me think of you,” Aaron says, and Carson kisses him right on his smile.  The beach is pretty much empty, but Carson likes to think he would have done it even with a full crowd.

\--

Aaron pulls sunscreen out of a bag and Carson shakes his head fondly as he insists on rubbing it into Carson’s neck and ears for him, but allows him to do it.

There’s sandwiches (crust still on) and chips and fruit snacks in the cooler, with Capri Suns lining the bottom.  “Mom still won’t let me have soda in her house at nearly 18 years old,” Aaron explains as he hands one over.

Carson throws gummies for Aaron to catch in his mouth and throws bits of his crust to the sea gulls.

“You might regret that one,” Aaron warns, laughing as Carson ducks when they circle too close.

“Okay, no more crusts for you,” Carson says, shooing away the birds with his empty silver pouch.

He’s impressed, though not surprised, that Aaron collects all their trash and puts it back in the cooler to dispose of later.

“So environmentally conscious,” Carson teases as he digs in his bag.

“Save the Whales,” Aaron sleepily quips back from where he’s already lying on the blanket, one knee bent and hands cushioning his head.

Carson laughs, lying down on his stomach so that he can still see the ocean, so much bluer than any picture he’d ever seen, as he opens up his leather journal to a blank page.

\--

It’s Carson that suggests that they talk a walk down the beach once all their things are packed safely in the car, hand-in-hand as the sun sets.  It’s cooler without the sun to offset the wind, and Carson keeps close for warmth.

“We _could_ go to the pier,” Aaron says, “but it’s the off-season.”

Carson wrinkles his nose a little.  “It would probably be crawling with middle schoolers.  There’s no way I could have enough skill to win any midway games, and there’s no telling how old those rides are.  Not terribly romantic.”

“Oh?” Aaron says, stopping and catching Carson’s other hand so that they’re facing each other.  “Not crazy about picking out the woefully tiny stuffed animal that I win for you?  Or wiping powdered sugar off my nose from our shared funnel cake? Or clinging to me in terror as we sit at the top of the rickety Ferris wheel waiting to come down and I just _have_ to kiss you?”

Carson laughs, smiling hard.  “You’ve thought this out, haven’t you?”

Aaron is so close Carson can feel the wiggle of his toes in the sand.  “I’ll just have to take you back here when the season starts and there’s plenty of middle schoolers to be completely annoying.”

“Deal,” Carson says, hardly caring what he’s agreeing to as he presses his mouth to Aaron’s.  It’s soft and sweet, the sunset just as beautiful in the red glow behind Carson’s eyelids.

“Thank you for today,” Carson says, fingers tight between Aaron’s.  “I can’t believe you remembered that I’d never been to the beach before.”

“I could never forget something as horrible and easily fixable as that,” Aaron shudders, tugging Carson back down the beach to the car.  “I’m glad you liked the date so much.”

“It was great,” Carson says softly, leaning into Aaron’s shoulder and feeling total contentment with the touch of soft lips to the top of his head.

\--

They grab fish tacos at a stand before they head home, the best Carson has ever eaten.  There’s errant fireworks that light up the night as they drive home, left over from the New Year, and Carson is drowsy and happy in the passenger seat.

He doesn’t even realize that he’s fallen asleep until the hard edge of Aaron’s voice cuts through his hazy dreams.

“I _didn’t_ lie to you.”  A long pause.  “I’ll be home in less than an hour, mom, we can talk about it then. Bye.”

“What’s wrong?” Carson says roughly, rubbing at his eye.  The highway is dark and quiet.

“Nothing, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Aaron says, reaching blindly to stroke over his hair.  “Go back to sleep.”

“I know you too well for you to put that act up for me,” Carson dismisses, pulling his too-tight seat belt away so he can sit up straighter.  “What’s wrong?”

Aaron sighs, but relents.  “It was my mom.  I told her I was going to the beach today, but I kind of let her draw her own conclusions as to who I was going with.  She went to the restaurant today-- which she _never does_ , I have the worst fucking luck-- and Francesca and all my other cousins were there working. But not me.”

“And she thought that was who you went to the beach with,” Carson finishes.  He isn’t sure how upset to be.  “What did she say?”

“She wants me home immediately,” Aaron says flatly.  “Punishment to be administered then.”

Carson has heard a lot about Aaron’s family, but not enough to put words in his mouth.  “Would it be better for you to tell her the truth, or?”

Aaron blows air out in frustration.  “I could tell her I was with Toby, and get him on my side, but then if she calls his mom and finds out I lied _again_ , my ass is grass.  I could say it was with Patty and Sarah, but then they’re going to want to know why I need them to cover for me and that’s just not worth it at all.  I could say it was by myself, but then I’ll get lectured about driving alone at night and probably taken back to the family therapist.  Looks like the truth it is.”

He looks miserable, and Carson feels bad for asking but has to know.  “Are you going to… tell them the whole truth? Or just something that makes them happy?”

Aaron’s shoulders are practically at his ears, fingers so tight around the wheel he could snap it in half.  “I want to, Carson, you know I do. But I can’t. I _can’t._ ”

“It’s okay,” Carson says, squeezes Aaron’s shoulder hard enough to _show_ him.  “It’s your choice.  Just tell me what I need to do for you.”

Helpless and unsure with Aaron so hopeless, Carson keeps talking.  “I never told you about what my mom said, did I?  I kind of told her about you and that I wasn’t straight in one fell swoop, I didn’t even take time to overthink it, I just blurted _Mom, I like a boy,_ and right over Thanksgiving lo mein.”

Aaron laughs, just one short huff, but it spurs Carson on.  “I think she was so excited to hear that I was actively trying to get closer to another human being instead of pushing them away that she wouldn’t have cared if I said I was going to try adopting an Ethiopian child or that I had picked up an abandoned baby in a basket.  And I should _never_ be allowed around babies.”

“You would probably forget to feed one,” Aaron says, and Carson sags with relief.

“I would,” he agrees, taking the tiny smile on Aaron’s face and running with it.  “I would leave the stroller on a bus or in the middle of the cereal aisle.  I would be terrible.”

“You’d try to teach him proper grammar and syntax before he could crawl.”

“I’d try to feed him whatever I was eating.”

“You really should trial run this with a puppy first, Carson. At least puppies will whine and bark and jump on you if you forget about them.”

“Hmm… sounds like someone I know,” Carson teases, hugging Aaron’s free arm close and so relieved that he’s smiling again.

“Like you could forget about me,” Aaron scoffs, puts his hand just above Carson’s knee.

Carson finds he can’t catch his breath enough to reply.

\--

Carson jolts awake as the clock turns to 12:36.  His phone is buzzing on his nightstand, and Aaron’s name on the screen nearly gives him a heart attack until he remembers that he told Aaron to call.

“Hey,” he says, heart still thumping hard, “How did it go?”

“As well as it could, considering.”  He sounds so _emotionless_ , it leaves Carson grasping for the right words to say.

“What happened?” he asks, realizing too late that that probably wasn’t it.

“They yelled,” Aaron says flatly.  “I explained that I told the truth, that I did go on a beach trip, and Mom never asked who I was going with.  I got quite the lecture about lies by omission.”

“Shit,” Carson breathes.

“And then,” he says, “they wanted to know all about you.  I told them that you’re the one I did the extra college project with, that you’re editor of the school newspaper, and that seemed to mostly pacify them.”

“Oh-- that’s pretty good then, right?” Carson says, sensing there’s something he’s not telling.

“Yeah, I guess.  There’s something else, though.”

“What?” Carson asks, the suspense torturous.

“They want to meet you.”

 

 

 


End file.
